Nicholas Payton

Payton at the 2007 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

Nicholas Anthony Payton (* 26. September 1973 in New Orleans ) is an American trumpeter and cornet player of the neo-bop jazz .

life and career

Payton was born in New Orleans in a musical family - his mother was a pianist and singer, his father Walter Payton double bass and tuba - and learned from four years trumpet. At the age of nine he played with his father in the “Young Tuxedo Brass Band” and at the age of twelve he performed at festivals in Europe with the “All Star Jazz Band”. Wynton Marsalis , also from New Orleans, encouraged him to play semi-professionally outside of school. He studied music and trumpet at the "New Orleans Center of Creative Arts" (NOCCA) and then at the University of New Orleans with Ellis Marsalis , the father of Wynton Marsalis. From the 1990s he played with well-known jazz musicians such as Clark Terry , Marcus Roberts , Elvin Jones , Courtney Pine , Joshua Redman , Roy Hargrove , Joe Henderson , Wynton Marsalis and in the SFJazz Collective . In 1996 he played the music for the film " Kansas City " by Robert Altman , as part of an "All Star Group" of younger American jazz. Around the same time he performed with the trumpeter Doc Cheatham until shortly before his death in 1997 and also recorded a record with him for which he received a Grammy (best instrumental solo). His first recording as a leader was on Verve in 1994.

Black American Music Debate

As a blogger, Payton sparked a debate at the end of 2011 through the thesis that jazz was dead (since it developed into cool jazz with its peak in 1959) and the designation itself was an (initially racist ) label for whites, which was caused by a narrowing of musical forms of expression and elitist Categorization and delimitation disputes imposed from outside on Black American Music (BAM) and its relationship with the audience have damaged. Instead of the term jazz, he suggests the use of BAM, which he also suggested at a panel discussion in front of a top-class audience from the American jazz scene in Birdland in January 2012. It was moderated by the writer and cultural critic Touré , participants were Gary Bartz (who worked with Miles Davis and Charles Mingus , who have expressed themselves in the past like Payton), Orrin Evans , Marcus Strickland and the bassist Ben Wolfe .

Payton prefers the term Post-Modern New Orleans Music for his music and sees jazz as the first American pop music with Louis Armstrong as its first pop superstar - he ironically describes himself as the Savior of Archaic Pop .

Discographic notes

as a leader:

• From This Moment , Verve 1994
• Gumbo Nouveau , Verve 1995
• with Christian McBride and Mark Whitfield : Fingerpainting: The Music Of Herbie Hancock , Verve 1997
• Doc Cheatham and Nicholas Payton , Verve 1997
• Payton's Place , Verve 1997
• Nick at Night , Verve 1999
• with Lew Soloff , Tom Harrell , Eddie Henderson : Trumpet Legacy , Milestone 1999
• Dear Louis , Verve 2001 (with Dianne Reeves , Dr. John )
• Sonic Trance , Warner Brothers 2003
• Afro-Carribean Mixtape , 2017
• Relaxin 'with Nick (Smoke Sessions, 2019)

Lexical entries

• Leonard Feather , Ira Gitler : The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. Oxford University Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-19-532000-X .

Web links

• Biography at Jazz Trumpet Solos
• Homepage
• interview

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jeff Tamarkin Is it time to retire the word Jazz? , Jazz Times, January 13, 2012 , Greg Thomas: BAM or Jazz: why it matters , Allaboutjazz, January 12, 2012, with further contributions to the discussion and the like. a. by Orrin Keepnews, Marcus Strickland, Scott Yanow . Christian Broecking , Süddeutsche Zeitung May 2, 2012, p. 11.
2. ↑ Payton On why jazz isn´t cool anymore , Payton's blog November 27, 2011 and An Open letter to my dissenters on why Jazz isn´t cool anymore , December 2011 ( Memento of the original from May 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info : The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Quotes: Jazz died when cool stopped being hipp , Jazz was a limited idea to begin with , Jazz was a label that was forced on the musicians , Jazz is incestuous , Jazz separated itself from American popular music 
3. ↑ Alternate Takes, BAM at Birdland, January 6, 2012 ( Memento of the original from January 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ I don´t play jazz ... I play postmodern New Orleans music , in his manifesto On why Jazz isn´t cool anymore from November 27th, 2011
5. ↑ Payton I love MJ (Michael Jackson), but Satchmo was the original King of Pop , Payton's blog, April 3, 2012 ( Memento of the original from April 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.