Biography
The son of a jazz singer and a music professor born into a family of noted jazz musicians, Branford Marsalis grew up always around instruments, leading him to the Berklee College of Music in his late teens. Before he was done with school, he started touring with Art Blakey playing saxophone. That experience led to more work in the early 1980s with a legion of acclaimed jazz musicians including Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, and Dizzy Gillespie. In this time, he put out his first solo album, Scenes in the City, and was a part of a variety of other projects, with his high-profile work on Sting's debut solo album The Dream of the Blue Turtles making him nearly as well-known as his elder brother Wynton Marsalis. 1986 saw Marsalis' first Grammy nomination for his third album Royal Garden Blues. In 1990, Marsalis played live with the Grateful Dead in what became a legendary improvised performance. He was the bandleader for the first three years of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" (NBC 1992-2014) before ceding the bandleader chair to guitarist Kevin Eubanks; the same year, he won his first Grammy award for I Heard You Twice the First Time. For a few years, he headed up the band Buckshot LeFonque, which combined jazz and rock for a unique sound. However, by the late '90s, Marsalis focused more on classically inspired works, eschewing rock accents for large symphonic orchestras. He was a regular nominee at the Grammys, earning two more wins over a span of two decades. In 2010, his work on the music for the revival of the play Fences earned him a Tony nomination.
