With his world-famous older brothers Wynton on ``headliner'' trumpet and Branford on sexy saxophone, Delfeayo Marsalis chose the trombone, gawky and U-shaped, without valves and prone to growl rather than purr.

Yet this second-youngest son of the country's foremost jazz family has emerged as a powerhouse: producer of 75 major-label recordings with big-time names such as singer Harry Connick Jr. and pianist Marcus Roberts; scorer for Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, and Mo Better Blues and the ABC mini-series Moon Over Miami, and performer with jazz legends Art Blakey, Abdullah Ibrahim, Slide Hampton, Max Roach and Elvin Jones.

``We grew up in New Orleans as a family of individual performers, not in a family band,'' Marsalis says. ``There was always competition as kids -- on the football field, with girls, and in music. We used to have talent shows at the house, and my mother would judge who had the best performance. She was always judicious and made sure to applaud our strengths. She might like my delivery or Branford's spirit or Wynton's preparation. My parents were thinking early on of exposing us to performance on a professional level, and always trying to outdo each other definitely helped us to grow at a rapid pace.''

``Delfeayo arises from an incredible heritage, multi-generational and rooted in New Orleans, America's birthplace for jazz,'' says Larry Rosen, producer of more than 350 jazz records and the Jazz Roots series at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. ``Ellis trained his super-talented kids. They spread out and now are reaching the highest levels of musical excellence. While Wynton and Branford are better known, Delfeayo is the whole ball of wax.''

Marsalis' third CD Minions Dominion, issued in 2006 with Branford on tenor sax and the late Jones on drums, will be followed this fall by Sweet Thunder, based on a Duke Ellington suite inspired by Shakespeare.

A big booster of youth education, Marsalis founded Uptown Music Theatre with the KidsTown AfterSchool program initiated this year in three New Orleans grammar schools. Last November he and his pianist father set up the Uptown Jazz Orchestra to play riff arrangements, blues-based big-band charts and New Orleans polyphonic numbers such as 2nd Line, When the Saints Go Marching In and Wynton's Crescent City Christmas Card.

On Thursday, Marsalis brings his jazz quintet to Coral Gables Congregational Church to close the 2009 Summer Concert Series.

Q: You took up the slide trombone. What was your attraction to that instrument as opposed to trumpet, sax or percussion?

A: When I first saw a trombone it looked like the instrument no sane person would want to play, so I immediately found my niche [laughs]. Unlike sax players, trumpeters, or pianists, we can't just press a key and have the note come out. We bridge the bass instruments and the higher pitched, so a trombonist must be even-tempered, cool, and listening on many levels at one time. Tommy Dorsey and J.J. Johnson were supreme technicians on the instrument. From Dorsey, I learned how to state a melody clearly with passion and from J.J. how to articulate the modern sound with clarity. J.J. called the trombone an ``unforgiving beast.''

Q: How would you describe musical production, its technical demands, and working on your two older brothers' albums?

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