| Nicholas Payton | |
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Payton playing at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, 5 May 2007 |
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| Background information | |
| Born | 26 September 1973 New Orleans, Louisiana United States |
| Genres | Jazz |
| Occupations | Musician |
| Instruments | Trumpet, electric piano |
| Years active | 1990–present |
| Labels | Verve, Warner Bros., Blue Note/EMI, Nonesuch |
| Associated acts | Young Tuxedo Brass Band, The Blue Note 7 |
| Website | Nicholas Payton Official site |
Nicholas Payton (born September 26, 1973) is a jazz trumpet player from New Orleans, Louisiana.
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The son of bassist and sousaphonist Walter Payton, he took up the trumpet at the age of four and by the time he was nine he was playing in the Young Tuxedo Brass Band alongside his father. Upon leaving school, he enrolled first at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and then at the University of New Orleans, where he studied with Ellis Marsalis.
After touring with Marcus Roberts and Elvin Jones in the early 90s, Payton signed a recording contract with Verve; his first album, From This Moment, appeared in 1994. In 1996 he performed on the soundtrack of the movie Kansas City, and in 1997 received a Grammy Award (Best Instrumental Solo) for his playing on the album Doc Cheatham & Nicholas Payton. After seven albums on Verve, Payton signed with Warner Bros. Records, releasing Sonic Trance, his first album on the new label, in 2003. Besides his recordings under his own name, Payton has also played and recorded with Wynton Marsalis, Dr. Michael White, Christian McBride, Joshua Redman, Roy Hargrove, Doc Cheatham and Joe Henderson.
In 2008, Payton became part of The Blue Note 7, a septet formed that year in honor of the 70th anniversary of Blue Note Records. The group recorded an album in 2008, entitled Mosaic, which was released in 2009 on Blue Note Records/EMI, and toured the United States in promotion of the album from January until April 2009.[1]
He also plays piano, and sometimes uses both instruments simultaneously, accompanying his right-handed trumpet with left-handed chords.
Payton is also a prolific blogger. In a blog entry titled "On the Difference Between Prejudice and Racism..."[2] Payton theorizes that blacks cannot be racist because a prerequisite to racism is power, and that whites have power over blacks in all areas except "...at the basketball court, on the bandstand, or in the bedroom." Payton also suggests that being white is the result of a recessive gene, and that racism is a white survival instict to avoid being "...reclaimed by its natural colored state."[3]