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The first time I ever played the trumpet in public, I played the Marine Hymn. I sounded terrible.
Wynton Marsalis
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Wynton Marsalis
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: October 18
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Trumpeter
New Orleans
Louisiana
Wynton Learson Marsalis
Firsts
Hymns
First
Trumpets
Time
Sounded
Marine
Played
Terrible
Public
Hymn
Ever
Trumpet
More quotes by Wynton Marsalis
Whenever you face a man who's playing your instrument, there's a competition.
Wynton Marsalis
In the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra we play such a diversity of music, with 10 arrangers in the band, we don't really worry about whether it's contemporary or not.
Wynton Marsalis
When those who are educated using their education to exploit those who aren't. That's what the sub-prime scandal represents - people of education using it at the expense of others. At Jazz at Lincoln Center, we have 22 educational programs. Not just the word but the substance of education is guided by the arts.
Wynton Marsalis
We all teach from that same frame of reference. We're like neighborhood - the people who have had the opportunity through this music to gain a platform and spread the message of this music, which is basically love in a form of communication that's honest and truthful.
Wynton Marsalis
I remember when I wrote a piece, Blood on the Fields, it was a while ago, it was about slavery and about two characters, and I studied so much of music, I would always go back to the original documents, and as much as I can get original chants and slave chants and different type of beats and rhythms and ring shout.
Wynton Marsalis
If you didn't have the amalgam of Blacks and African-type sensibility and European sensibility, you wouldn't have jazz. Even in the negative and in the positive ways - if there was no slavery and the abolition of slavery, there would be no jazz.
Wynton Marsalis
Thank the good Lord for a job.
Wynton Marsalis
Because the blues is the basis of most American music in the 20th century. It's a 12-bar form that's played by jazz, bluegrass and country musicians. It has a rhythmic vocabulary that's been used by rock n' roll. It's related to spirituals, and even the American fiddle tradition.
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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.
Wynton Marsalis
The main three components are the blues, improvisation - which is some kind of element that people are trying to make it up - and swing, which means even though they're making up music, they're trying to make it up together. It feels great, like you're having a great conversation with somebody.
Wynton Marsalis
Ethics are more important than laws. Which means that the exact note is less important than the feeling of the note.
Wynton Marsalis
My daddy expected that my brothers and I and our generation would make the world a better place. He had lived in an America of continual social progress.
Wynton Marsalis
The black hole in democracy is integrity. The great unspoken is integrity. When integrity is not first and foremost, it's quite palpable but not visible. It's always there. Jazz highlights it because musicians and jazz always represented a high level of integrity.
Wynton Marsalis
Some stances are just conducive to swinging. If I stand up straight for too long it's harder to swing. Plus my feet hurt.
Wynton Marsalis
What takes its place is very dry education. And the tools that actually can teach you - singing and playing, learning how to participate with other people, spiritual richness - are replaced with a big emphasis on how to memorize things. That's such an incomplete education. Survival of the fittest used to mean being bigger and stronger.
Wynton Marsalis
You don't try to duplicate certain things that other cats do, because you could never do it as well as they do. Nobody can get on that tenor saxophone and play like Trane, because he's the only one who can spell out chords and sound good when he does it.
Wynton Marsalis
One thing about excellence, it&Mac226s an exclusive club. And it&Mac226s only for those who really want to pay dues to the s--. My daddy told me when I was a boy: The only way you can be different from other people is to do some s-- they don't want to do.
Wynton Marsalis
New Orleans - the real New Orleans - is the soul of the country.
Wynton Marsalis
The reason why the music [jazz] is important is because it's an art form-an ancient art form-that takes in the mythology of our people.
Wynton Marsalis
Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.
Wynton Marsalis
