Marcus Shelby

Marcus Shelby (born February 2, 1966, in Anchorage, Alaska)[1] is an American bass player, composer and educator best known for his major works for jazz orchestra, Port Chicago, Harriet Tubman,[2] Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Beyond the Blues: A Prison Oratorio.

[3] He has led the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra since 2001 and has recorded with artists as diverse as Ledisi and Tom Waits.

After winning the Charles Mingus Scholarship in 1991 he studied music at California Institute of the Arts with Higgins,[5] composer James Newton, and Charlie Haden.

[6] From 1991 to 1996 he recorded and toured with Black/Note (credited as Mark Shelby), a hard bop group based in Los Angeles.

When Black/Note broke up in 1996, he moved to San Francisco because he "had seen groups like Broun Fellinis" whose tenor saxophonist of the time, David Boyce, "was playing a totally different style", and he felt a need to grow.