Jazz at Lincoln Center announced a 2023-24 concert season on Tuesday that includes tribute concerts to the influential saxophonist Wayne Shorter and performances from both jazz world fixtures like Bobby Rush and Terence Blanchard and up-and-coming artists like the singer Samara Joy, who won a Grammy for best new artist this year.
Wynton Marsalis, the composer and trumpeter who is the organization’s managing and artistic director, will be among the artists celebrating Shorter, who died this month, on March 8 and 9 of next year.
Rush, the singer, guitarist and harmonica player who is considered one of the last remaining blues masters of his generation, will play early next year, the center announced. Next March, Blanchard, the film and opera composer best known for scoring Spike Lee films, is scheduled to perform a career retrospective with his band, the E-Collective, and the Turtle Island Quartet.
And Joy, who won her first Grammy this year at 23, will headline her first show at the organization’s Rose Theater in October.
Marsalis, who is the face of Jazz at Lincoln Center, is slated to play several other concerts this year and next. He and the rest of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will open the season on Sept. 21 with a “reimagining” of his small group compositions as big band orchestrations in a concert called “Beyond Black Codes,” a reference to his 1985 album “Black Codes (From the Underground).” In January, Marsalis will pay tribute to Max Roach, the drummer and a founder of modern jazz, in concerts that mark 100 years from Roach’s birth in 1924.
Another pair of concerts in February will celebrate three other jazz architects: Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and Charles Mingus, with music direction by Vincent Gardner, the trombonist and composer. The other part of the concert includes the premiere of a new suite, called “Usonian Structures,” by the composer and saxophonist Andy Farber.
Ellington will also be the focus of concerts in the spring, led by Marsalis, to celebrate what would have been his 125th birthday. There will also be performances paying tribute to the civil rights activist and singer Bayard Rustin, which will be presented by the drummer Bryan Carter, as well as concerts celebrating the singers Mahalia Jackson and Sarah Vaughan.
Other performances include an annual Valentine’s Day concert from Dianne Reeves; concerts by the guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel; a set of shows by Catherine Russell, celebrating the genre of Hot Club jazz that emerged in 1930s Paris; and a two-night event by the ensemble Artemis. The saxophonist Sherman Irby will premiere a new commission, called “Musings of Cosmic Stuff.”
