Duke Ellington was born April 29, 1899. 125 years after his birth, a concert series is celebrating the pianist and composer’s monumental impact on music.

Wynton Marsalis, the Grammy award-winning jazz master, is honoring his legacy.

Marsalis joins Reset to discuss his beginnings in music, Ellington’s impact and the event where “Jazz meets Classical.”

When were you first exposed to Duke Ellington?

I listened to Duke’s music a little bit, but I didn’t really like it. I didn’t have the taste for Big Band music. Then when I left New Orleans, I got the Smithsonian Collection of Jazz. There was a piece called “Braggin’ and Brass” from 1938…I got addicted to his music, just the sophistication of it. The range and the brilliance of it. The originality… the genius of the thematic cohesiveness of his music.

How did Ellington create an “American tapestry?”

Well, he was the American bard of the 20th century. Walt Whitman was the bard of the 19th century. And just to achieve that originality of timbre harmony, to understand the implications of the blues with that type of depth, to interpret folk material and to use the American popular song like folk material. To the type of mastery of form and understanding and insight into the nature of the people that he came from. With Duke you find all types of regional music…. He liked to use the phrase “beyond category.”

Are you trying to embody Ellington’s style?

Yes. Always. I try to embody the best of any of the things that I know about…I believe in maintaining the spirit of our music and the way that we do things, with the kind of insistence on a personal engagement to familiar feeling.

The performance features compositions from Sergei Prokofiev, John Adams, Dmitri Shostakovich, Duke Ellington. What’s the connective tissue between these pieces?

Russian tradition has a lot in common with the American tradition. The very strong folk melodies and the kind of dance bottom base, the tendency toward a darkness of mood, the use of brass instruments for punctuation. And it’s something in the character, a similar sense of humor.

It’s a suite for a variety orchestra. So it’s kind of like circus music, band music and waltzes, and all the things that jazz and classical music have in common in its folk root.

What’s the best advice you got from the greats you played with?

Sarah Vaughan said, learn songs off the record and learn them completely. Be thorough in everything that you do.

GUEST: Wynton Marsalis, acclaimed trumpeter and composer