Marc T. Gaspard Bolin is a performer/scholar who has enjoyed a nearly three-decade-long career as a professional musician, arranger, and educator. As a performer and arranger, Marc has enjoyed working with some of the music industry's most exceptional entertainers, such as Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, Kamasi Washington, Kanye West, Black Eyed Peas, John Legend, Evanescence, Florence & The Machine, Aloe Blacc, Big Sean, Deltron 3030, and among others. His performing experience ranges across the entire spectrum of entertainment industries and platforms: studio recordings, soundtrack recordings, live concerts, television appearances, radio jockeying, and on-air guesting, features in audio recordings and music videos across multiple streaming services, such as YouTube and Spotify, and technical advising for films.
Marc's notable achievements in arranging span a wide range of commissions, including pieces for three-part horn sections, big bands, wind ensembles, and orchestras. His diverse repertoire encompasses various musical styles, such as pop, rock, R&B, salsa, and jazz. In 2021, he received a prestigious commission from the Lexington Philharmonic Society to produce a 15-minute suite of music from Duke Ellington's unfinished opera Queenie Pie. This piece, which he originally completed in 2008 for the Oakland Opera Theater, has been performed by renowned opera programs such as the Butler School of Music Opera Program at the University of Texas, Austin (2009), the Long Beach Opera (2014), and Chicago Opera Theater (2014). These commissions underscore the recognition and respect Marc has earned in his field.
As an ethnomusicologist, his work is grounded in his own jazz practice and is deeply informed by his collaborators. His dissertation, "The Second Line: A (Re)Conceptualization of the New Orleans Brass Band Tradition," focuses on the dynamic relationships between music and religion and how jazz culture—and its practitioners—are represented in the canon. He is also a dedicated filmmaker, utilizing film as an integral component and sensorial mode of inquiry to construct new visual and sensory ways of knowing second line culture.
Marc has taught courses and designed curricula at the university level, presenting topics such as ethnomusicology, jazz history, the New Orleans brass band tradition, Women in Jazz, African American musical heritage, and Jazz and Social Justice. As a jazz instructor, he helps students develop their creative mindsets by teaching them strategies that enable them to apply and extend their musician-listenership. These skills allow students to perform all musical tasks and produce creative outcomes expressively. Alongside his classroom teaching responsibilities, Marc also runs a thriving Tuba/Euphonium studio at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
Beyond his teaching responsibilities, Marc's scholarly pursuits have made significant contributions to the field. He is currently working on a book titled Continuities at the Center of the Jazz Universe, which is under contract with the University Press of Mississippi and delves into often-overlooked facets of New Orleans' jazz heritage. Marc's project aims to contribute to a more holistic understanding of jazz history by amplifying marginalized narratives. Furthermore, his upcoming article, "Congo Square and the Second Line: Their Relevance to Shifting Narratives about Jazz History," is slated for publication in the Journal of Jazz Studies this June. This article further enriches the ongoing scholarly discourse on jazz's origins by exploring the evolving narratives surrounding Congo Square and second line traditions. Marc joined the speaking faculty at the Los Angeles Philharmonic's UPBEAT LIVE Series in 2022. He has presented several pre-concert talks, including "Tchaikovsky & Ellington," "Tchaikovsky and Adès," "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," and "Marginalized Mavericks: Minority Composers Redefining Classical Traditions," and, facilitated several Q&A sessions with notable artists such as Elim Chan, Leila Josefowicz, Clarice Assad, and Victor Wooten.
Marc is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and fought in Operation Desert Storm for the liberation of Kuwait.
You can keep up with Marc via his website at https://www.brassopera.com.