Jazz icon Branford Marsalis to perform in New Albany

This weekend, the New Albany Symphony Orchestra is to host a much-lauded saxophonist, a passionate advocate of jazz and an emissary of one of America’s great musical families ? and they’re all the same person.

On April 13, Branford Marsalis ? one of six children born to jazz pianist Ellis Louis Marsalis Jr. ? is to join the orchestra for a concert in the McCoy Center for the Arts in New Albany. (Marsalis’ siblings include Wynton Marsalis, the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City.)

A prolific recording artist, and for a time in the 1990s as the bandleader of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” Marsalis is to perform a fulsome set of pieces with the orchestra, including works by Duke Ellington and John Williams.

Speaking from his home base of New Orleans, the 63-year-old artist recently chatted with The Dispatch.

Question: You’ve taken on a leadership role at the Ellis Marsalis Center for Musicin New Orleans, which is named for your father. What can you tell us about that?

Branford Marsalis: I’ve taken on an advisory leadership role. I’m still traveling as a musician, so it would be impossible to be there full-time. I’m going to be focusing on the music side of the center. The education side is covered very well.

Question: What is the purpose of the center?

Marsalis: It’s basically an after-school program to assist kids, particularly in situations where the parents work full-time and there’s not a stay-at-home parent. When I was growing up, it used to be football, baseball, marching band that kept the kids occupied, but since the ’80s, the band programs have been seen as unessential in most places, except maybe New Orleans. So we’re using music as the center of an educational facility. They’re learning how to play instruments, but they also have to do their homework.

Question: Is New Orleans the heartbeat of American jazz?

Marsalis: Jazz originated in New Orleans, and it has branched out all over the country and all over the world. You have all of these people who play versions of it. I think that a lot of musicians that I’ve met would benefit from spending time here (in New Orleans). It’s not a requirement. The majority of people who are known as jazz musicians never spent any time here at all, nor do they even know anything about New-Orleans music. There are a lot of people from New Orleans who don’t know a lot about New-Orleans music.

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Question: As jazz has evolved, is there something still distinctive about the New-Orleans sound?

Marsalis: The New-Orleans sound, at its best, has an emotion. A lot of modern jazz, it’s almost emotionless, because the focus of the musicians is harmony, not sound. So many of the musicians here still aren’t really like great readers of music, and didn’t study harmony. They consistently recreate the sound of joy, or the sound of anger or the sound of sadness ? the things their parents and grandparents and forefathers have all done.

Question: How did you get connected with the saxophone?

Marsalis: I was playing clarinet, and I wanted to make myself attractive to girls. I was 14 years old, and suddenly I noticed, “Man, girls are really the thing!” I was really shy. So what did I have in my arsenal? Playing clarinet is not a thing... So I came up with this scheme where I’d start playing the saxophone, and I would join an R&B band. I told my parents, “I want to get a saxophone.” They said, “Sure, OK.” I eventually got the saxophone, and what I noticed was that the girls went for the singers and the guitar players!

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Question: When you get together with your siblings, do you talk shop?

Marsalis: We spend most of our time talking about our family and kids, and telling jokes and giving each other hell. Because we can get on the phone any time and talk shop. We do it with regularity, whether it’s through text message or email or telephone calls. We talk shop all the time.

Question: What will you be performing with the New Albany SymphonyOrchestra?

Marsalis: I’m still kind of old-school, so I like playing multiple pieces. A lot of times, you only play one, they clap for you, push you off the stage and then the symphony gets to do its thing... (With the New Albany Symphony), I’m getting to play the John-Williams piece, “Escapades,” which I love, and the Darius Milhaud composition, “Scaramouche,” which I also love, but have not played in a very long time. In addition to that, I’m playing the saxophone part, with the orchestra, in Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” and in (Duke Ellington’s) “Black, Brown and Beige.”

At a glance

Branford Marsalis is to perform with the New Albany Symphony Orchestra at 7:30 p.m. April 13 at the McCoy Center for the Arts, 100 E. Dublin-Granville Road, New Albany.

Tickets start at $35. For more information, visit newalbanysymphony.com.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: April 13: Jazz star to take stage in New Albany