A truly great jazz trumpeter; quite handy with the classical repertoire too. He's The Face of Jazz, and a Bad Thing, in that his revisionist view consigns nearly all post-50's innovation to the outhouse of Not Jazz. Wynton's the embodiment of the truism that "history is written by the victors"; his total embrace of the old school impoverishes his mature works. It's still worth a listen; I just prefer the stuff he did before he nailed himself to the Jazz Soapbox.

Wynton Marsalis appeared frequently on Ken Burns' film on Jazz as an source of much information on the history of jazz styles and artists, regularly demonstrating on his custom built trumpet the styles of the time.

Many people regard him as a musical technician as opposed to musical improvisor and/or innovator, due to his dissmissal of post-1950's jazz and finger-in-every-pie approach to jazz.

On saying that, in my opinion he is a marvelous trumpet player, both classical and jazz styles that he plays.

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