From the Publisher

By Louis A. Weil III

Jazz strikes a resonant chord in the life of senior editor Thomas Sancton, who reported and wrote this week's cover story on trumpet virtuoso Wynton Marsalis. A native of New Orleans, Sancton studied the clarinet with some of the city's veteran musicians and began sitting in on French Quarter jam sessions as a teenager. Since moving to the Big Apple, he has continued to play occasional gigs at local night spots and in the studio. Last month G.H.B. Records released Tom's seventh album, New Orleans Reunion, a collection of traditional blues and standards that he recorded with a clarinet-drum-piano trio.

Sancton's jazz interest has given him an insider's edge as a journalist. Last year he was able to trade notes with the subject of a profile he was working on, film director (and fellow clarinetist) Woody Allen. Several months ago, Tom began doing research for a piece on Marsalis. "But the more I looked at today's jazz scene," he says, "the more I realized that there was a bigger story there: Wynton's success was the springboard for a jazz renaissance in which a whole new generation of talented young players was taking the music to a mainstream audience."

Tom took time off from his normal assignment editing stories in the Nation section to interview up-and-coming jazz players and industry experts. Then he spent hours with Marsalis in his home, jazz clubs, dressing rooms, limousines and even on the stage of a Harlem theater, where the trumpeter was recording a classical album. Along the way, Sancton benefited from their shared love of the music and common Louisiana roots: he and Marsalis went to the same New Orleans high school. One night while the two men were talking in Marsalis' living room, the trumpeter's goddaughter Adorea, 2, called from Washington asking for a lullaby. He picked up his trumpet and played her the theme from Sesame Street over the phone.

Tom came away from the story confident that jazz is in good hands. "These kids, who will chart the future of this great American art form over the coming decades, have the sense to realize that they cannot move forward until they understand where the music came from," he says. "That's a lesson a lot of them learned from Wynton." And one for which all jazz fans can be grateful.