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
I became a man in New York. New York made me the musician that I am and the person that I am, so it's impossible for me to say I regret having lived there.
What I've learned how to do as I've gotten older is to take all of the information that I have, and push it aside, and try to distill each song into an emotional theme. The hardest thing that I've ever had to learn how to do in playing music is use the sound of my instrument to create an emotional effect.
The majority of the high schools and the public schools in N.Y.C. don't even have band programs. Hip-hop in a lot of ways is an outgrowth of a lack of instruments and a desire to play music, so we can't really fault the kids for that.
The heart of a music is its rhythm. The heart of rhythm section music is the rhythm.
The musicians I respected were much older than me. I expected them to cut my head, and they did.
Music is always for the listener, but the first listener is always the musician
I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.
Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures.
I'm just lucky to have the type of friends and musicians and people dedicated to my music that I do.
If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying.
No particular music makes me feel nostalgic. If it's great, it just keeps me in the present moment. That level of music is like a classic story, like the Iliad-something so perfect it can never be old.
We're blues people. And blues never lets tragedy have the last word.
Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.
Only a few act - the rest of us reap the benefits of their risk.