Branford Marsalis Quartet

2011 NEA Jazz Master Branford Marsalis represents “the highest echelon of jazz tenor saxophonists” (Los Angeles Times). For this exclusive matinee concert co-sponsored by The Jazz Cruise, the New Orleans-born composer and bandleader returns with his superlative quartet featuring pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis, and drummer Justin Faulkner to perform a hard-driving mix of standards and his own superlative compositions. 

As the eldest musical sibling in jazz’s most famous contemporary clan, Marsalis parlayed his formative experiences in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and his brother Wynton’s band into simultaneous careers as a performer, educator, composer, label owner, and bandleader with over 30 albums to his name. A three-time GRAMMY winner and 18-time nominee, Marsalis’ insatiable desire to expand horizons has found him performing with the New York Philharmonic, embracing hip hop influences with his Buckshot LaFonque project, leading the house band on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, working in the pop realm with Sting and Bruce Hornsby, and composing the score to the Oscar-winning 2020 film Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. He recorded his acclaimed 2013 live solo recital, In My Solitude, at Grace Cathedral as part of the 30th San Francisco Jazz Festival, and his latest album and Blue Note debut, 2025’s Belonging, is a reinterpretation of piano great Keith Jarrett’s landmark 1974 ECM quartet release of the same name.