Tickets on sale to see Branford Marsalis Quartet in April
Daily Inter-Lake | UPDATED 15 hours, 55 minutes AGO
Tickets are on sale to see the Branford Marsalis Quartet perform at the Wachholz College Center in April 2026. Pictured is bassist Eric Revis, bandleader and saxophonist Branford Marsalis, drummer Justin Faulkner and pianist Joey Calderazzo. (Courtesy photo)
The Wachholz College Center welcomes back the influential Branford Marsalis Quartet for an April 8, 2026, concert.
Saxophonist and composer Branford Marsalis is a Grammy Award winner and Tony and Emmy Award nominee who is equally at home performing concertos with symphony orchestras or sitting in with members of the Grateful Dead, but the core of his musical universe remains the quartet.
After more than three decades of existence with minimal personnel changes, this celebrated ensemble is revered for its uncompromising interpretation of a kaleidoscopic range of both original compositions and jazz and popular classics.
Releasing his first recording as a bandleader, “Scenes in the City,” in 1984, he went on to form the quartet in 1986 and win three Grammy Awards. After receiving Grammy nominations on the quartet’s last two albums, “Upward Spiral" and "The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul,” the ensemble made its Blue Note Records debut with the release of “Belonging,” a full album interpretation of Keith Jarrett's 1974 ECM album of the same name.
As a composer, Marsalis has been nominated for a Tony Award for his work on Broadway and in 2021, he was nominated for an Emmy for the score he composed for a documentary titled, “Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre,” for according to his bio at branfordmarsalis.com.
In 2011, the Marsalis family was honored with the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship Award.
Outside of performance, he is committed to the development of the next generation of musicians. He enjoys working with students and has formed an extended relationship with North Carolina Central University where he has been teaching for the past 18 years.
In the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, Marsalis, along with friend Harry Connick, Jr., conceived of Musicians’ Village, a residential community in the Upper Ninth Ward of New Orleans. The centerpiece of the village is the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, honoring his father. The center uses music as the focal point of a holistic strategy to build a healthy community and to deliver a broad range of services to underserved children, youth and musicians from neighborhoods battling poverty and social injustice.
Tickets range in price from $45.30 to $62.30 and may be purchased online at wccmt.org or by calling the ticket office at 756-1400.