Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Learson Marsalisis a trumpeter, composer, teacher, music educator, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, United States. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences. Marsalis has been awarded nine Grammys in both genres, and his Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Marsalis is the son of jazz musician Ellis Marsalis, Jr., grandson of Ellis Marsalis, Sr., and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth18 October 1961
CityNew Orleans, LA
CountryUnited States of America
But you listen to Coltrane and that's something human, something that's about elevation. It's like making love to a woman. It's about something of value, it's not just loud. It doesn't have that violent connotation to it. I wanted to be a jazz musician so bad, but I really couldn't. There was no way I could figure out to learn how to play.
When I was 12, I began listening to John Coltrane and I developed a love for jazz, which I still have more and more each year.
The first time I ever played the trumpet in public, I played the Marine Hymn. I sounded terrible.
I get so much from having the opportunity to interface with the younger people and to bring information to them and to represent our culture and our way of life. The feeling and the warmth and the love, it's unbelievable. The type of exchange that goes on between students and teachers or visiting people who are doing master classes, and not just when they're musicians. Even general classes, when the students are not necessarily musicians.
My schedule is always tight. But I like to have the pressure of having to finish doing something; it gives me an added edge.
Even in these times, there are still neighbors that will turn their backs on neighbors.
I didn't want to get that ring around my lips from practicing the trumpet, because I thought the girls wouldn't like me. So I never practiced.
You need a team. You need people to push you. You need opponents.
The young very seldom lead anything in our country today. It's been quite some time since a younger generation pushed an older one to a higher standard.
I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.
What, other than injustice, could be the reason that the displaced citizens of New Orleans cannot be accommodated by the richest nation in the world?
The fact that we are culturally ignorant and we don't know what our heritage is, the price that we pay is that we act outside of ourselves almost all the time. We make very bad decisions how we deal with other people and their culture.
Don't wish for someone else to do later what you can do now.
I almost never watch TV, except for '60 Minutes' and pro football. I love Drew Brees, the Manning brothers and the Steelers' linebackers.