Originally broadcast at 12 p.m. EDT Thursday, October 15, 2020.

Famed jazz musician Wynton Marsalis speaks with Michael Curry, the 27th Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church.

ABOUT PRESIDING BISHOP MICHAEL CURRY

Presiding Bishop Curry was installed as the 27th Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church on November 1, 2015. He was elected to a nine-year term and confirmed at the 78th General Convention of The Episcopal Church in Salt Lake City, UT, on June 27, 2015. He is the Chief Pastor and serves as President and Chief Executive Officer, and as Chair of the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church.

Throughout his ministry, Presiding Bishop Curry has been active in issues of social justice, reconciliation, speaking out on immigration policy and marriage equality. In his three parish ministries in North Carolina, Ohio, and Maryland, Presiding Bishop Curry had extensive involvement in preaching missions; Crisis Control Ministry; the founding of ecumenical summer day camps for children; preaching missions; the Absalom Jones initiative; creation of networks of family day care providers; creation of educational centers; and the brokering of millions of dollars of investment in inner-city neighborhoods. As Bishop in the Diocese of North Carolina, Presiding Bishop Curry instituted a network of canons, deacons, and youth ministry professionals dedicated to supporting the ministry that happens in local congregations. He refocused the Diocese on The Episcopal Church’s Millennium Development Goals through a $400,000 campaign to buy malaria nets that saved over 100,000 lives.

Presiding Bishop Curry maintains a national preaching and teaching ministry, having been featured on The Protestant Hour and as a frequent speaker at churches, cathedrals, and conferences around the country and internationally. He has authored five books: “Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Time” (2020); “The Power of Love” (2018); “Following the Way of Jesus: Church's Teachings in a Changing World” (2017); “Songs My Grandma Sang” (2015); and “Crazy Christians: A Call to Follow Jesus” (2013).

ABOUT WYNTON MARSALIS

Wynton Marsalis is the managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and a world-renowned trumpeter and composer. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1961, Marsalis began his classical training on trumpet at age 12, entered The Juilliard School at age 17, and then joined Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. He made his recording debut as a leader in 1982, and has since recorded more than 60 jazz and classical recordings, which have won him nine GRAMMY Awards. In 1983 he became the first and only artist to win both classical and jazz GRAMMYs in the same year and repeated this feat in 1984.

Marsalis is also an internationally respected teacher and spokesman for music education, and has received honorary doctorates from dozens of U.S. universities and colleges. He has written six books; his most recent are “Squeak, Rumble, Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!”, illustrated by Paul Rogers and published by Candlewick Press in 2012, and “Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life” with Geoffrey C. Ward, published by Random House in 2008. In 1997 Marsalis became the first jazz artist to be awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in music for his oratorio “Blood on the Fields,” which was commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center.

In 2001 he was appointed Messenger of Peace by Mr. Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, and he has also been designated cultural ambassador to the United States of America by the U.S. State Department through their CultureConnect program.

About Chautauqua Institution: Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all of learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through civil dialogue. CHQ Assembly is the online expression of Chautauqua Institution's mission.