THE HOBBY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS IN COLLABORATION WITH JAZZ HOUSTON PRESENTS
JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA WITH WYNTON MARSALIS
ONE-NIGHT-ONLY ON NOVEMBER 16
TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY, JULY 25, 2025
WHO: The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts
WHAT: Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
WHEN: November 16, 2025 | Sunday at 7:00pm
WHERE: The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts | Sarofim Hall | 800 Bagby Street | Houston, TX 77002
TICKETS: Start at $41. Available online at TheHobbyCenter.org and in person at the Hobby Center Box Office (800 Bagby, Houston, TX 77002).
Houston, TX – The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts in collaboration with Jazz Houston presents arguably the best jazz band in the world and keepers of the living history jazz, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO) with Wynton Marsalis for a one-night-only engagement November 16, 2025 at the Hobby Center. Tickets on sale Friday, July 25 at 10 am and are available at TheHobbyCenter.org.
JLCO is comprised of world-class improvisers, arrangers, and composers who alongside Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis have redefined big band music. The evening will showcase the talents of Houston’s own and longtime JLCO orchestra member Vincent Gardner – the Founding Artistic Director of Jazz Houston.
From timeless classics to bold new compositions, this world-renowned group of virtuoso musicians delivers a night of music that’s both deeply rooted and freshly inspired. Whether a longtime jazz lover or new to the genre, this concert promises to move, thrill, and inspire.
Founded in 1988, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis tours the world performing a vast repertoire of music, from beloved standards to historic and rare compositions to commissioned works. A veritable treasure trove of jazz then, jazz now, and jazz to be, the group’s compositions and arrangements include works by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, and Charles Mingus, as well as new music from the group’s unrivalled collection of world-renowned composers and arrangers.
“We are honored to welcome the incomparable Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to Sarofim Hall at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts this November. Managing and Artistic Director, trumpeter and bandleader Wynton Marsalis is revered as one of our nation’s greatest and most influential artists. Wynton and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra epitomize high artistic quality and are a perfect fit for the Hobby Center as we expand our scope of artistic programming beyond Broadway,” Mark Folkes, President and CEO of the Hobby Center said. “The cherry on top is that we get to collaborate with a thriving local arts organization, Jazz Houston, in presenting this performance, with the nationally respected Jazz Houston Youth Orchestra opening the program!”
Jazz Houston Youth Orchestra will open the evening with a 20-minute prelude performance before the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra takes the stage. This audition-only youth orchestra is made up of 22 of Houston’s finest young musicians. The ensemble is directed by David Caceres and assisted by Associate Director James Williams III. Jazz Houston promotes the cultivation of jazz music globally through Performance, Education, and Community Outreach, and honors the Houstonians and Texans who have and continue to be major contributors to Jazz through the celebration of their legacies and the performance of their works.
“This collaboration with the Hobby Center is a celebration of our city’s deep jazz legacy and a powerful opportunity to inspire the next generation, starting with the young talents of the Jazz Houston Youth Orchestra,” said Vincent Gardner, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Jazz Houston and longtime member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. “Playing in Houston with Wynton and the JLCO is more than a concert—it’s a homecoming of sorts. It’s going to be an unforgettable night, not to be missed!”
Under the leadership of Marsalis, the band performs at its home, Frederick P. Rose Hall–also known as The House of Swing–tours throughout the U.S. and abroad, visits schools, appears on television, and performs with symphony orchestras. The Orchestra performed alongside Wynton Marsalis on his album Blood on the Fields, a work that earned Marsalis the Pulitzer Prize in 1997.
Since 2015, the Orchestra’s albums have been issued on its own label, Blue Engine Records. The first release from Blue Engine Records, Live in Cuba, was recorded on a historic 2010 trip to Havana by the JLCO and released in October 2015. The label issued Big Band Holidays in December 2015, The Abyssinian Mass in March 2016, The Music of John Lewis in March 2017, the JLCO’s Handful of Keys in September 2017, among many titles.
Blue Engine’s United We Swing: Best of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Galas features the Wynton Marsalis Septet and an array of special guests, with all proceeds going toward Jazz at Lincoln Center’s education initiatives. Recent JLCO and Wynton Marsalis album releases on Blue Engine Records include The Shanghai Suite (2024), The Music of Max Roach, (2024), Wynton Marsalis Plays Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives (2023) and Hot Sevens, and The Jungle (2023), a recording of Marsalis’ fourth symphony featuring the JLCO and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
TICKETING: Tickets start at $41. On sale Friday, July 25 at 10 am at TheHobbyCenter.org and in person at the Hobby Center Box Office (800 Bagby, Houston, TX 77002).
Patrons can become a “Hobby Center Insider” by signing up at thehobbycenter.org/news/stay-connected where they receive perks such as access to purchase tickets before the public.
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, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra 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 Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra members Wynton Marsalis, Wycliffe Gordon, Ted Nash, Victor Goines, Sherman Irby, Chris Crenshaw, and Carlos Henriquez.
Wynton Marsalis (Music Director, Trumpet) is the Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1961 to a musical family, Mr. Marsalis was gifted his first trumpet at age 6 by Al Hirt. By 8, he began playing in the famed Fairview Baptist Church Band led by Danny Barker. Yet it was not until he turned 12 that Marsalis began his formal training on the trumpet. Subsequently, Wynton began performing in bands all over the city, from the New Orleans Philharmonic and New Orleans Youth Orchestra to a funk band called the Creators. His passion for music rapidly escalated. As a young teenager fresh out of high school, Wynton moved to New York City in 1979 to attend The Juilliard School to study classical music. Once there, however, he found that jazz was calling him. His career quickly launched when he traded Juilliard for Art Blakey’s band, The Jazz Messengers. By 19, Wynton hit the road with his own band and has been touring the world ever since. From 1981 to date, Wynton has performed 4,777 concerts in 849 distinct cities and 64 countries around the world. Mr. Marsalis made his recording debut as a leader in 1982 and has since recorded 110 jazz and classical albums, four alternative records, and released five DVDs. In total, he has recorded 1,539 songs at the time of this writing. Marsalis is the winner of 9 GRAMMY Awards, and his oratorio Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He’s the only musician to win a GRAMMY Award in two categories, jazz and classical, during the same year (1983, 1984).
Mr. Marsalis has solidified himself as an internationally acclaimed musician, composer and bandleader, educator and advocate of American culture. As a composer, his body of work includes over 600 original songs, 11 ballets, four symphonies, eight suites, two chamber pieces, one string quartet, two masses, one violin concerto, and in 2021, a tuba concerto. Included in this rich body of compositions is Sweet Release; Jazz: Six Syncopated Movements; Jump Start and Jazz; Citi Movement/Griot New York; At the Octoroon Balls; In This House, On This Morning; and Big Train. As part of his work at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Wynton has produced and performed countless new collaborative compositions, including the ballet Them Twos, for a 1999 collaboration with the New York City Ballet. That same year, he premiered the monumental work All Rise, commissioned and performed by the New York Philharmonic along with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the Morgan State University Choir. All Rise was performed with the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra as part of the remembrance of the centennial anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre in June 2021. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wynton and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra have released 7 full-length albums and 4 singles on Blue Engine Records.
Mr. Marsalis is also a globally respected teacher and spokesman for music education. For Jazz, Wynton led the effort to construct Jazz at Lincoln Center’s new home–Frederick P. Rose Hall–the first education, performance, and broadcast facility devoted to jazz, which opened in October 2004. He conducts educational programs for students of all ages and hosts the popular Jazz for Young People™ concerts produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center. In addition to his work at JALC, Wynton is also the Founding Director of Jazz Studies at the Juilliard School. Mr. Marsalis has written and is the host of the video series “Marsalis on Music,” the radio series “Making the Music,” and a weekly conversation series titled “Skain’s Domain.” He has written and co-written nine books, including two children’s books, Squeak, Rumble, Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! and Jazz ABZ: An A to Z Collection of Jazz Portraits, both illustrated by Paul Rogers. Wynton has received such accolades as having been appointed Messenger of Peace by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan (2001), The National Medal of Arts (2005), The National Medal of Humanities (2016). In December 2021, Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center were awarded the Key to New York City by Mayor Bill de Blasio. Marsalis has received honorary doctorates from 39 universities and colleges throughout the U.S, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Tulane University in New Orleans. Wynton Marsalis’ core beliefs and foundation for living are based on the principles of jazz. He promotes individual creativity (improvisation), collective cooperation (swing), gratitude and good manners (sophistication), and faces adversity with persistent optimism (the blues).
Jazz Houston promotes the cultivation of jazz music globally through Performance, Education, and Community Outreach, and honors the Houstonians and Texans who have and continue to be major contributors to Jazz through the celebration of their legacies and the performance of their works.