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If the 2026 concert season at Bethel Woods has a final word, this is it. Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra close out the venue’s fall calendar on October 24, 2026, with New Orleans Songbook — a program that goes straight to the source. No detours, no abstractions. This is the music of the city where jazz was born, performed by the ensemble and the artist most singularly devoted to preserving and advancing that tradition.
New Orleans is not just where Marsalis is from. It is the foundation of everything he has built. Born and raised in the Crescent City, the son of pianist Ellis Marsalis, Wynton absorbed second-line rhythms and brass band swagger before he could read a note of sheet music. That upbringing informs every measure of this program. New Orleans Songbook draws from the deep well of the city’s musical heritage — Louis Armstrong’s innovations, the Preservation Hall tradition, the gospel and blues undercurrents that fed every genre that followed. In the JLCO’s hands, this material breathes with the authority of musicians who understand it not as repertoire but as inheritance.
About the Program
The JLCO’s fifteen members bring a collective versatility that allows the program to move fluidly between eras and idioms. Expect traditional New Orleans jazz to sit alongside modern arrangements that push the harmony and rhythm into territory the originators could not have imagined but would certainly recognize. Marsalis’s own trumpet playing — lyrical, precise, capable of moving from a whisper to a shout within a single phrase — will anchor the evening. This is not a museum piece. It is a living, evolving tribute to a city and a sound that changed the world.
This is the third Jazz at Lincoln Center date at Bethel Woods in 2026, following Sing & Swing in May and From Bossa to Swing in early October. The venue has made the JLCO a cornerstone of its programming, and for good reason.
Venue Info
Bethel Woods Center for the Arts on the original Woodstock grounds in Sullivan County will be deep into its fall character by late October. The hills will be alight with the last of the autumn color, the evening air will be cool enough to warrant a jacket, and the crowd for a closing-weekend jazz program will be the kind of audience that sits, listens, and lets every note land. If the summer season at Bethel Woods is about energy and spectacle, the fall dates are about depth and intention. This show embodies that shift perfectly.
Tickets & Pricing
This show has been announced. Tickets will be available through the Bethel Woods box office and website. The birthplace of jazz, celebrated on the grounds where American counterculture was born, on the last Saturday of October. It is a closing note worthy of the season.