Nicholas Payton

Trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Nicholas Payton was raised in New Orleans, a town chock-full of trumpet players, and while an innovator himself, he followed in the footsteps of a mile-long line of tradition-based players including Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong, Al Hirt, and of course, Wynton Marsalis. Payton is the son of Walter Payton, a well-known bassist on the Crescent City jazz scene. His mother played piano. Raised as he was in a musical family, Payton often spent upwards of ten hours a day practicing trumpet in his youth. He began playing trumpet as a four-year-old, after asking his father to get him one. He began accompanying his father to shows at clubs in his youth and had the chance to hear many great trumpet players. "I had a chance to hear some great trumpeters like Wendell Brunious, Leroy Jones, Clyde Kerr, Jr. and Teddy Riley," Payton recalled in a 2003 interview, and he recalls seeing Wynton Marsalis when he was in high school. "I got to hear a bunch of people play trumpet in a town that has been noted for trumpet players since Buddy Bolden. For me, trumpet fit my personality. It suited my voice. You're able to express a wide range of emotions on the instrument," he said. The turning point for the young Payton came when he was 11, when he heard a Miles Davis quartet album that was in his parents' record collection. With the opening notes of the recording, he knew then he wanted to be a trumpet player and play jazz. He began performing publicly as a ten-year old and began playing in the streets as a year later. He worked everywhere from jazz funerals to weddings to bar mitzvahs, and played on the streets for tips, and though he knew he wanted to play jazz, "you can't make a living in New Orleans being a genre-oriented musician. A lot of the guys my father played with in jazz bands were school teachers during the day, and they would play gigs at night and on weekends." Payton attended New Orleans' high school for the Creative Arts and studied with Clyde Kerr, Jr.; he later studied briefly at the University of New Orleans with pianist Ellis Marsalis, who raised Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo and Jason. Payton learned more from showing up at the elder Marsalis' gigs at Snug Harbor and other Crescent City jazz clubs than he did in the classroom. "He would let me sit in," Payton recalled in 2003, "and the thing with Ellis is he challenges you to be able to teach yourself. That's the key to jazz. Only you can know how you want to sound. A good teacher will facilitate the development of your own style." Payton's college career at UNO was interrupted by the chance to go on the road with drummer Elvin Jones. He had spent time on the road with Marcus Roberts and other touring musicians, but those were shorter stints. Spending two years on the road with drummer Jones was his first big break, he recalled. Through the years, Payton has recorded and performed with Wynton Marsalis, Dr. Michael White, Christian McBride, Joshua Redman, Roy Hargrove, Doc Cheatham, and Joe Henderson, among others. Payton began his recording career with Verve Records, and his first album, From This Moment was released in 1992. Two years later, he performed on the soundtrack for the movie Kansas City, and in 1997 he received a Grammy Award for his playing on a collaboration with then-nonagenarian trumpeter, Doc Cheatham, for his playing on the album Doc Cheatham & Nicholas Payton. He also released 1995's Gumbo Nouveau, 1997's Fingerpainting: The Music of Herbie Hancock, 1998's Payton's Place, 1999's ick@Night, and 2001's Dear Louis. He signed with Warner Bros. in 2003, releasing the '70s fusion-influenced Sonic Trance. An auto accident briefly sidelined Payton's career as he took time to fully recover. He returned with Mysterious Shorter on Chesky in 2006 and Into the Blue on Nonesuch in 2008.