Lionel Hampton Big Band feat. Jason Marsalis

“Hamp” is Back—in spirit—with the Lionel Hampton Big Band featuring Jason Marsalis. After a 15 year hiatus, the Lionel Hampton Big Band is back in action, with world-class musicians who played with Hamp himself: Jason Marsalis, Cleave Guyton, Jr, Lance Bryant, and Christian Fabian.

“Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Buddy Rich, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Quincy Jones,
Oscar Peterson, Dizzie Gillespie—they all played with Hamp” says Fabian, the last Bass Chair under Hampton, and the bass player for the new incarnation. “In 2015, audiences will find out what made him so popular—we’ll be playing the arrangements that made him a star. We know the secret—we all worked with him.” When Seton Hall University heard the rumor that the Band might be forming, they rushed to book the Band’s first date. “This is jazz history” said Greg Scime, Adjunct Professor of Jazz Piano Studies. “We want to be part of it!”
Christian Fabian plays with Mike Longo’s New York State of the Art Jazz Ensemble in New York City, is a jazz ambassador for the US State Department with his band The Native Jazz Quartet, and plays to SRO clubs in Japan with ukelele player Herb Otha. Jason Marsalis, of the Marsalis jazz dynasty (recipients of the NEA Jazz Masters award), plays all over the world with his own bands and with Marcus Roberts. Cleave Guyton has played with Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie and many more.

Jason is the son of pianist and music educator Ellis Marsalis and his wife Dolores, and the youngest sibling of Wynton, Branford and Delfeayo. By age six, Jason was taking lessons from the legendary New Orleans drummer James Black. Jason was progressing so rapidly as a drummer that in 1984 his father started using him consistently on engagements. In 1991, he auditioned and was accepted at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts High School (NOCCA). In 1995, Marsalis joined a new group lead by virtuoso pianist Marcus Roberts, while studying composition with notable classical composer Roger Dickerson. During this time Jason was playing with Joe Henderson, Lionel Hampton, CasaSamba, Neslort, Dr. Michael White, and in 1998 he co-founded the Latin-jazz group Los Hombres Calientes. In 2009, the Marsalis Family received the NEA Jazz Masters Award and were honored at the White House and the Kennedy Center. In 2010, Christian Fabian called him to record with drummer Ed Littlefield and pianist Reuel Lubag on two records, Fabian’s West Coast Session and Littlefield’s Walking Between Worlds. That collaboration inspired the formation of The Native Jazz Quartet, which recorded NJQ Stories in 2012 and toured for the US State Department. The Quartet transforms native melodies into jazz arrangements. In 2013, Marsalis produced In a World of Mallets as a leader on vibes. The album went to Number 1 on the CMJ radio charts.