Wynton Marsalis on jazz band’s Hong Kong concerts and having ‘a good time wherever I go’
Audience can expect classical jazz pieces from the 1920s and 30s, a Marsalis original and ‘a good time’ as trumpeter celebrates his birthday
Grammy-winning composer and modern jazz pioneer Wynton Marsalis will celebrate his birthday on stage with a Hong Kong audience this week.
“I have a good time wherever I go. It’s going to be significant to me because it’s my birthday, but only to me. It’s not significant to you, necessarily,” quips the US trumpeter, who will turn 63 on October 18.
Marsalis is in Hong Kong as part of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s 2024 East Asia tour – he and his band last performed in the city in 1998 – and will give two evening concerts, on October 17 and 18, at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in Wan Chai.
“The whole orchestra is here, and we’ll play classical jazz pieces from the 20s and 30s – the greatest arrangements ever made of this style – and an original piece I wrote called Shanghai Suite,” says Marsalis, who helped start Jazz at Lincoln Center in 1987.
