JAZZ GURU

Fresh off the Marsalis family’s 2011 NEA Jazz Masters Award victory, one of their most prolific sons returns to the Jazz at Lincoln Center stage with a different brood in tow. Trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and JALC Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis hits the Rose Theater with a specially arranged 10-piece ensemble of hornsmiths and rhythmists, many of whom performed on his Pulitzer Prize–winning 1997 jazz oratorio Blood on the Fields. (Give it a spin if you haven’t already; the narrative follows a couple escaping slavery, and it’s gorgeous.) Expect thoughtfulness when Marsalis flutters his valves, and before that, too; JALC also hosts a free, pre-concert discussion one hour before curtain time and, if you saw Ken Burns’s monolithic Jazz documentary series, you know that Marsalis treads knowledgeably and lovingly through all the fundamental eras of his art form.

March 31-April 2, 8 p.m., 2011