Nine-time Grammy Award winner Wynton Marsalis arrived in Nigeria ahead of his headline performance at the 2025 Runway Jazz event in Lagos on Sunday.
The fusion show, themed “Timeless Return”, will blend global jazz, Nigerian musical talent, and runway fashion. Organisers aim to position Lagos as a major international centre for jazz and style.
Marsalis, who will perform alongside Made Kuti and other acts, expressed his excitement about visiting Nigeria. “I have always wanted to be here,” he told journalists on Saturday, adding that he had eagerly anticipated the event.
Born in New Orleans in 1961, Marsalis serves as the Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC). He began playing the trumpet as a child and honed his skills in local orchestras and jazz bands before studying classical trumpet at The Juilliard School. He launched his professional career with Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers at seventeen and has toured globally ever since.
Over his career, Marsalis has performed more than 5,300 concerts in 856 cities across 66 countries and released over 110 albums. He is the only artist to win Grammy Awards in both jazz and classical categories in the same year (1983 and 1984). His jazz oratorio Blood on the Fields was the first of its kind to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Marsalis has composed more than 600 works, including symphonies, concertos, and major jazz suites, and continues to champion music education through initiatives such as the Essentially Ellington competition. He has received numerous honours, including the National Medal of Arts, the National Humanities Medal, and Japan’s prestigious Praemium Imperiale for Music.
Throughout his career, Marsalis has promoted the core values of jazz — creativity, collaboration, sophistication, and resilience — principles he believes apply both to music and to life.