Ellis Marsalis, Jr.
Jazz Educator of the Year Award

ABOUT ELLIS MARSALIS, JR.

This prestigious award is named after legendary jazz educator Ellis Marsalis, Jr., a New Orleans jazz pianist whose focus was on bebop and modern jazz. In the 1960s, he played with several notable modernist musicians, including saxophonist Harold Battiste and drummer Ed Blackwell, as well as with the Adderley brothers when they came through town. He employed his trad chops, accompanying trumpeter Al Hirt in the ’60s and ’70s and gigging regularly at his New Orleans club.

Marsalis earned his master’s degree in music education from Loyola University in 1974, and that same year became the first jazz teacher at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. It was then that his reputation began to spread more widely. Connick, Blanchard, and his own sons were among his students; countless others came through his classroom, now known as the Ellis Marsalis Jr. Jazz Studio.

In 1986, as his sons and other students became jazz phenomena, Marsalis quit New Orleans for a job at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. In 1989, he returned to New Orleans to found the jazz studies program at the University of New Orleans, where he remained until his retirement in 2001. You could also find him at a Friday night gig at the Frenchmen Street jazz club Snug Harbor—which became a 30-year residency that ended in December 2019.