Branford Marsalis

A virtuoso jazz saxophonist with a wry improvisational sense, Branford Marsalis is a boundary-pushing performer who has explored an array of styles from post-bop and traditional jazz to classical, funk, hip-hop, and rock. Initially emerging in the 1980s to widespread acclaim alongside his brother, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, Branford drew early comparisons to idols Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane, and Sonny Rollins. Ever creatively restless, he branched out, playing with Sting, Béla Fleck, and Bruce Hornsby, as well as his own genre-bending side project Buckshot LeFonque. He brings the same adventurous, exploratory approach to his recordings, investigating aspects of the blues on 1992's Grammy-winning I Heard You Twice the First Time, leading his harmonically sophisticated quartet on 2000's Grammy-winning Contemporary Jazz, and collaborating with vocalist Kurt Elling for 2016's poetically atmospheric Upward Spiral. He hit the Top Five of the jazz charts with 2019's The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul, scored the 2020 biopic Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and continued his classical explorations on 2023's Sound of the Sun.

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