An intimate evening with musical icon Wynton Marsalis

It's been more than a decade since Wynton Marsalis played Seattle with a small group, so anticipation is high for Saturday's 8 p.m. concert at the Paramount Theatre, part of the Earshot Jazz Festival ($35-$75; 206-628-0888 or www.ticketmaster.com).

The great trumpet player and composer usually comes with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which is not a big solo outlet for him.

A select group of local students is pumped about Marsalis' visit, too, as they are part of an invitation-only master class with him at 2 p.m. Saturday.

Pulitzer Prize winner, virtuoso in jazz and classical music, artistic director of jazz at Lincoln Center and nine-time Grammy Award winner, Marsalis is easily the most important jazz figure of the past two decades.

For all his renown, Marsalis, who just turned 45, is a down-to-earth guy who has never forgotten his humble beginnings in New Orleans as the son of a music teacher (jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis).

The first thing he mentioned on the telephone from Olympia, where the band kicked off a three-week West Coast tour on Tuesday, were the excellent ribs his drummer Ali Jackson's father had brought by the night before.

"He has a catering business down here," Marsalis said, adding that Jackson met his wife in Seattle one night after the band played here.

"It's all family," he said. "Ali, man, he's playing some unbelievable drums, he's not playing around. The cats are seriously swinging."

The cats, in this case, are four members of the larger JLCO: blues-drenched, soulful tenor saxophonist Walter Blanding Jr.; strong and supple bassist Carlos Henriquez; new pianist Dan Nimmer; and Jackson.

Miami-raised vocalist Jennifer Sanon, past winner of Jazz at Lincoln Center's Essentially Ellington competition, performs two or three tunes, as well.

It's great to see Marsalis back on the road for another reason.

Earlier this year, he had an operation on his lip.

"I had an ingrown hair," he explained. "It got calcified. I could feel it in there, swollen, for two years. But I couldn't figure out what it was. I had six stitches."

Marsalis was unable to play for nearly two months, but in some ways, it was a timely wakeup call.

"It made me appreciate playing more," he said. "I was always a natural. I never had problems with my playing. At this stage, in middle age, having to go back and actually practice like I was in high school was a good thing."

Marsalis said he's just about 100 percent back. And he's not slowing down much.

He had just flown in from Moscow, where, after his own gig, he jammed for two hours with saxophonist Igor Butman.

"The night before that, we went to a club and played all night with Russian musicians," he said.

No wonder his lip hurt.

When he was a young man, critics often said Marsalis had no sound of his own — ironic, considering today his sound and style are so instantly recognizable.

Whether he is squirting suddenly up to a high note, wah-wahing with the plunger mute, soft-shoeing a romantic interlude or slip-sliding with incredible dexterity between registers, Marsalis speaks his own language on the instrument.

All that was evident on the live album he released last year, "Live at the House of Tribes" (Blue Note).

Expect some serious swinging, indeed.

Paul de Barros: 206-464-3247 or pdebarros@seattletimes.com