Biography

Described by one reviewer as a "canny and imaginative player whose solos display an extraordinary sense of architecture and conception", award-winning trombonist David Marriott is a musician for the next generation - equally at home as a performer, composer, arranger, and educator. David is co-leader, with brother Thomas, of the Marriott Jazz Quintet, which gained early acclaim for its first CD, Open Season (1997). The group was voted the Best Emerging Group by Earshot Jazz that same year, and Best Acoustic Jazz Group in 1999. Open Season and The High Country , their second CD, have been featured on Jim Wilke's NPR's Jazz After Hours by host Jim Wilke, who picked both as among the top CDs in the Northwest when released. David, who also produced both CDs, wrote and arranged much of the music on them. David also received critical acclaim for his CD project Septology: In The Beginning, a seven-part jazz suite he composed for septet, based on the seven days of creation. Both The High Country and Septology: In the Beginning garnered four stars from the prestigious All-Music Guide.

David also has an illustrious performance background, having won the Eastern Trombone Workshop Jazz Soloist Competition in 1999. He is member of Seattle's highly acclaimed Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra and the New York-based Brian Lynch Big Band. David has also been a regular member of the Port Townsend Jazz Festival all-star band, and has been a featured performer at the festival with the Marriott Jazz Quintet on numerous occasions. Other festival appearances include the Puerto Rico Heineken Jazz Festival with Ray Vega's Latin Jazz Sextet, Bumbershoot, DuMaurier Jazz, First Jazz Festival (Portland, OR), and Earshot Jazz Festival. With the Marriott Jazz Quintet, he has performed regularly at New York's The Kavehaz, 55Bar and Detour.

David has been an active participant in the "recording process," having appeared on ten recordings with his trombone, and has also served as a producer and graphic designer on several occasions. In addition to his recordings with the Marriott Jazz Quintet and his own Septology project, David has worked with such artists as Stuart Dempster, Mark Taylor, Jim Knapp, Steve Korn, Seattle's Young Lions, and, most recently, saxophonist David Liebman. In other areas of the music business, David also continues to work as a copyist and/or arranger, with such clients as David Liebman, Jeff "Tain" Watts, Kenny Garrett, and Delfeayo Marsalis.

In addition to David's work as a performer, he is a passionate educator, both as a private instructor and in the classroom. With experience teaching in public and private high school programs, summer jazz workshops, guest clinician appearances, Hunter College, Manhattan School of Music's Preparatory Division, and most recently at the University of Washington, David works avidly to teach young musicians not only the mechanics and history involved in playing and learning about jazz music, but also how to find their own voice as an improviser, find their own path in the jazz tradition, and find their own, individual passion about jazz. As a teacher of improvisation, theory, and history, David continues to pass the jazz tradition along to others with the establishment of a new jazz workshop tailored to each group of students; the Astoria Jazz Workshop officially opened on October 19, 2002 and served many students while David lived in New York. He is now bringing this model back to Seattle, to be launched in the fall of 2006.