JLCO History

The members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra are 15 of the best soloists, ensemble players, and arrangers in jazz. In residence since 1988, it is widely regarded as the ‘finest big band in the world today’ (Daily Telegraph, UK). This remarkably versatile band celebrates jazz’s large-ensemble tradition by performing a vast repertoire of masterpieces by legends of the genre, including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Billy Strayhorn, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Charles Mingus, Chick Corea, Oliver Nelson, and many others, as well as original works and arrangements. Guest conductors have included Benny Carter, John Lewis, Jimmy Heath, Chico O'Farrill, Ray Santos, Paquito D’Rivera, Jon Faddis, Robert Sadin, David Berger, Gerald Wilson, and Loren Schoenberg.

The JLCO has performed collaborations with many of the world’s leading symphony orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Russian National Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston, Chicago and London Symphony Orchestras, the Orchestra Esperimentale in São Paolo, Brazil, and others. In 2006, the JLCO collaborated with Ghanaian drum collective Odadaa!, led by Yacub Addy, to perform Congo Square, a composition Marsalis and Addy co-wrote and dedicated to Marsalis’ native New Orleans. The JLCO performed Marsalis’ symphony, Swing Symphony, with the Berlin Philharmonic in Berlin and with the New York Philharmonic in New York City in 2010, and with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Los Angeles in 2011. Swing Symphony is a Co-Commission by the New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and The Barbican Centre.