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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

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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
Worry
Whether
Lincoln
Orchestra
Music
Contemporary
Play
Center
Really
Diversity
Jazz
Band

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

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I got my first trumpet when I was six years old, from Al Hirt. My father was playing in Al Hirt's band at that time.
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Let the critics criticize and let the doers do.
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For Black people, we're one of the only groups of people that for some reason to express love of yourself, in some ways, is misconstrued as a dislike for someone else.
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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.
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The blues is always there. It's going to be hard out here, but it's all right. It's all right, and that's what the blues teaches you. You got to roll with the punches and find your equilibrium.
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What is deeper than respect and love? That’s what we felt: veneration.
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Jazz music is the power of now.
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Don't worry about what others say about your music. Pursue whatever you are hearing... but if everybody really hates your music maybe you could try some different approaches.
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When I auditioned for my high school band the band director was excited because my father was known to be a great musician. When he heard me, he said 'Are you sure you're Ellis's son?'
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When me and my brother would go to see our daddy playing, there'd be 30 people in the audience. I was only 14 or 15, but I realised something was wrong.
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Whenever you face a man who's playing your instrument, there's a competition.
Wynton Marsalis
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This music heals people because music is vibration, and the proper vibration heals.
Wynton Marsalis
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I think that virtuosity is the first sign of morality in a musician. It means you're serious enough to practice.
Wynton Marsalis
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The history of jazz lets us know that this period in our history is not the only period we've come through together. If we truly understood the history of our national arts, we'd know that we have mutual aspirations, a shared history, in good times and bad.
Wynton Marsalis
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Our culture is what we did together. What did Walt Whitman represent for all of us? What was his message to us? That is an inheritance, and when we squander that inheritance we act outside. We don't know who we are we don't know where we are.
Wynton Marsalis
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Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.
Wynton Marsalis
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We started to confuse entertainment with art, because art has a component of entertainment. It has to have that or it becomes too boring. It becomes too lost in its own devices. But I just think that we started to lose, and even before that, it's not necessary.
Wynton Marsalis
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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.
Wynton Marsalis
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Through first-class education, a generation marches down the long uncertain road of the future with confidence.
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There really have only ever been a few people in each generation who step out, are willing to put themselves on the line, and risk everything for their beliefs.
Wynton Marsalis