Branford Marsalis & Joey Calderazzo
Saxophonist Branford Marsalis is jazz music - from his Marsalis family devotion to traditional New Orleans jazz to the modernist edginess of his 2019 recording The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul. In between is a lifetime of learning, performing, composing, and educating as a longtime teacher/mentor at North Carolina Central University, as an explorer/performer of classical music, as a player with the Grateful Dead and Sting, a composer for Broadway and film including the Netflix original Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and as a winner of three GRAMMYs.
He returns to Duke Performances after a two-year hiatus for a virtual presentation on May 1, 2021, with pianist Joey Calderazzo (also an NCCU teacher/mentor). Marsalis and Calderazzo come prepared with fresh originals, familiar standards, and echoes of jazz history.