Marsalis a jazz man at heart

When it comes to jazz, there are few – if any – families as famous as the Marsalises.

There’s the family patriarch Ellis, the highly regarded pianist and music teacher. There’s second-born son Wynton, the trumpeter, teacher, band leader, jazz ambassador and winner of nine Grammy Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. There are the younger sons Delfeayo, a trombonist, and Jason, a drummer.

Eldest son Branford is the saxophone player in the family. He’s the Marsalis who first came to international prominence playing on Sting’s first solo album, 1985’s “The Dream of the Blue Turtles.” He’s the Marsalis who co-starred in Spike Lee’s 1988 film “School Daze,” and who lead the “Tonight Show” Band from 1992 to 1995.

Before all of that, though, he was playing jazz, touring Japan with Herbie Hancock and Europe with Art Blakey in the early ’80s. He played in the first incarnation of Wynton Marsalis’ quintet and guested on records by Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.

It’s in his capacity as a jazz performer and teacher that Branford Marsalis will be in Spokane this weekend, performing Saturday with the Whitworth Jazz Ensemble and hosting a jazz clinic Friday at Whitworth University.

Marsalis didn’t think about playing jazz professionally until he was nearly 20, he said in a recent phone interview from his home in Durham, North Carolina. This was despite growing up in the home of a jazz musician in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz.

“I had really good friends from high school. I learned very early that we could talk about the Saints, or we could talk girls, we could talk about boys, we could talk about politics,” he said, “but talking about non-popular music is a waste of time.”

As a teenager, he was a “funketeer,” who played keyboards in a rock band. “I’m like the killer wedding band,” he added. “If you want to play just about any songs from the ’60s and ’70s, and just about half the songs from the ’50s, I have you covered.”

Still, he said, “I play pop music because I like it. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t play. Sting was one of the greatest popular songwriters, and it was an honor to play with him. There are a whole lot of other people I would not have played with because they’re just popular.”

The 56-year-old said he may have gravitated toward jazz as he looked for new musical challenges. In his 20s he started listening to jazz records “and trying to figure that out, and that took about 10 years.”

“It was a purely musical decision,” he added. “I never aspired to be a pop star. I always envisioned myself as playing in a band for a pop star, in a horn section, with my cool little sequined outfit on and doing my dance routine.”

Since 1984, Marsalis has recorded 30 albums and film soundtracks as a bandleader, including the Grammy-winning “I Heard You Twice the First Time” (1992) and “Contemporary Jazz” (2000). As a sideman, he’s appeared on dozens of other records by everyone from his longtime friend Harry Connick Jr. and the Grateful Dead to Kevin Eubanks and Bela Fleck. He’s performed with his family as well, including 2003’s “The Marsalis Family: A Jazz Celebration” with his three brothers and father.

That desire to stretch himself returned in his 40s, as he turned his attention to the classical repertoire.

“It’s like being a really great popular storyteller. When you figure out how to hit the success button, you don’t run around and try to find something else; you just keep doing that,” he said. “But I think it’s kind of a trap in a way, because in anything that you do, there’s a law of diminishing returns unless you replenish it with something else. I’d pretty much run my course with being able to grow with jazz by itself. So I needed something that was going to make me a better saxophone player. And the great thing about classical music is that you’re in a constant state of discomfort because you have people writing songs who don’t know you, the music unwittingly exposes your weaknesses.”

He’s released three classical albums, and in 2012 he went to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco to perform a solo concert that included his own original music, the American standard “Stardust” by Hoagy Carmichael and C.P.E. Bach’s Sonata in A Minor for Oboe. By the end of the night, he said, he was exhausted. But he assumed he’d be able to cross “perform solo concert” off his list of things to do. The recording sounded good, so Marsalis released “In My Solitude: Live at Grace Cathedral” in 2014. And the album was so popular, he keeps getting asked to perform solo. It’s something he admits has him flummoxed. “People seem to like it, which I cannot for the life of me explain,” he said. “I’m grateful, but I’m at an absolute loss as to why.”

But jazz will be the focus this weekend in Spokane. And the idea of performing with students doesn’t have him too concerned.

“It’s jazz,” he said. “We should all know the vocabulary.”