Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO), comprising 15 of the finest jazz soloists and ensemble players today, has been the Jazz at Lincoln Center resident orchestra since 1988 and spends over a third of the year on tour across the world. Featured in all aspects of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s programming, this remarkably versatile orchestra performs and leads educational events in New York, across the U.S. and around the globe; in concert halls; dance venues; jazz clubs; public parks; and with symphony orchestras; ballet troupes; local students; and an ever-expanding roster of guest artists. Under Music Director Wynton Marsalis, JLCO performs a vast repertoire, from rare historic compositions to Jazz at Lincoln Center-commissioned works, including compositions and arrangements by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Charles Mingus, and current and former JLCO members Wynton Marsalis, Wycliffe Gordon, Ted Nash, Victor Goines, Sherman Irby, Chris Crenshaw, and Carlos Henriquez.

Throughout the last decade, the JLCO has performed with many of the world’s leading symphony orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic; Cleveland Orchestra; Philadelphia Orchestra; Czech Philharmonic; Berlin Philharmonic; Boston Symphony Orchestra; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; London Symphony Orchestra; Sydney Symphony Orchestra; Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; St. Louis Symphony Orchestra; Los Angeles Philharmonic and many others. Marsalis’ three major works for full symphony orchestra and jazz orchestra, All Rise – Symphony No. 1 (1999), Swing Symphony – Symphony No. 3 (2010), and The Jungle – Symphony No. 4 (2016), continue to be the focal point of JLCO’s symphonic collaborations.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has also been featured in several education and performance residencies in the last few years, including those in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia; Chautauqua, NY; Prague, Vienna, and London in Europe; São Paulo, Brazil; and many others.

Education is a major part of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s mission; its educational activities are coordinated with concert and JLCO tour programming. These programs, many of which feature JLCO members, include the celebrated Jazz for Young People™ family concert series; the Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival; the Jazz for Young People™ Curriculum; Let Freedom Swing educational residencies; workshops; and concerts for students and adults worldwide. Jazz at Lincoln Center educational programs reach over 110,000 students, teachers and general audience members.

Jazz at Lincoln Center, NPR Music and WBGO have partnered to create the next generation of jazz programming in public radio: Jazz Night in America. The series showcases today’s vital jazz scene while also underscoring the genre’s storied history. Hosted by bassist Christian McBride, the program features hand-picked performances from across the country, woven with the colorful stories of the artists behind them.

In 2015, Jazz at Lincoln Center launched Blue Engine Records, a platform to make its vast archive of recorded concerts available to jazz audiences everywhere. The label is dedicated to releasing new studio and live recordings as well as archival recordings from past Jazz at Lincoln Center performances, and its first record—Live in Cuba, recorded on a historic 2010 trip to Havana by the JLCO with Wynton Marsalis—was released in October 2015. Numerous titles followed, most recently 2020’s A Swingin’ Sesame Street Celebration and 2021’s The Democracy Suite featuring the JLCO Septet with Wynton Marsalis.