Marcus Shelby


Marcus Shelby is an American bass player, composer and educator best known for his major works for jazz orchestra, Port Chicago, Harriet Tubman, Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Beyond the Blues: A Prison Oratorio. He has led the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra since 2001 and has recorded with artists as diverse as Ledisi and Tom Waits.
He has contributed numerous musical compositions to works created in collaboration with dance ensembles and theater artists ranging from California Shakespeare Theater to Intersection for the Arts.

Background

When Shelby was 5, his family moved from Memphis, Tennessee to Sacramento, California. Shelby played double bass briefly as a teen, but abandoned music until 1988, when he attended a Wynton Marsalis concert with his father, which inspired him to rededicate himself to music.
Shelby moved to Los Angeles and began working with drummer Billy Higgins. After winning the Charles Mingus Scholarship in 1991 he studied music at California Institute of the Arts with Higgins, composer James Newton, and Charlie Haden.
From 1991–1996 he recorded and toured with Black/Note, a hard bop group based in Los Angeles.
In 1996, he moved to San Francisco, where he founded the Marcus Shelby Trio and the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra. He has served as Artist in Residence at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Composer in Residence at Intersection for the Arts.
In 2013, Shelby was appointed to the San Francisco Arts Commission.
Marcus has 2 daughters Kennedy and Billie.

Major works

With Black/Note