Marcus Shelby

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

Shelby played double bass briefly as a teen, but abandoned music until 1988, when he attended a Wynton Marsalis concert with his father, which inspired him to rededicate himself to music.

Shelby moved to Los Angeles and began working with drummer Billy Higgins.

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

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.

There he founded the Marcus Shelby Trio and the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra.

He has served as Artist in Residence at Yerba Buena Gardens Festival and Composer in Residence at Intersection for the Arts.

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

He has contributed numerous musical compositions to works created in collaboration with dance ensembles and theater artists ranging from California Shakespeare Theater to Intersection for the Arts.

When Shelby was five, his family moved from Memphis, Tennessee, to Sacramento, California.

In 2013, Shelby was appointed to the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Shelby is a long-time faculty member at the San Francisco Community Music Center.

Marcus has two daughters.