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In Jazz, improvisation isn't a matter of just making any ol' thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and vocabulary. There's no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others.
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
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Language
Making
Others
Music
Improvisation
Better
Vocabulary
Matter
Jazz
Right
Choices
Thing
Wrong
More quotes by Wynton Marsalis
It's really not a stretch. The checks and balances are the same. The drums are the executive branch. The jazz orchestra is the legislative branch. Logic and reason are like jazz solos. The bass player is the judicial branch. One our greatest ever is Milt Hinton, and his nickname is The Judge.
Wynton Marsalis
Benny Goodman's band was integrated before baseball. Even before it was physically integrated, music was integrated. Everyone listened to Armstrong and Ellington. The 20s was called the Jazz Age. It's part of being American.
Wynton Marsalis
Jazz celebrates older generations and not just the youth movement. When you sell only to people of a certain age, you get cut off from the main body of experience. The power of couple dancing and courtship, it's elegant, and you wouldn't realize America was once a nation of dancers and singers today. People of all races could dance and sing.
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 older brother and myself always played together in bands, but we never knew we would be professional musicians.
Wynton Marsalis
Sustained intensity equals ecstacy.
Wynton Marsalis
I try to put a lot of our music in my music - by that I mean of American music.
Wynton Marsalis
Having heard Clifford Brown play all those fast runs, I used to really practice Clarke trumpet exercises all day long so that I could play fast. That's all I wanted to do. I was like a child with a toy.
Wynton Marsalis
We need more math classes, we need more science. It's the art of math and the art of science that creates all the innovation, and we have a tradition of great arts, great music.
Wynton Marsalis
Many of our greatest musicians abandoned all of their aesthetic objectives to try to become pertinent. And, at the end of the day, they never became pop stars. I counter stated that very strongly, and I continue to do that.
Wynton Marsalis
Don't wish for someone else to do later what you can do now.
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
Everything comes out in blues music: joy , pain , struggle . Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance.
Wynton Marsalis
We created the spirituals. We created so much great music, jazz chief amongst our innovations, teaching us how to prize ourselves and how to speak to one another, that our kids don't know that achievement, there's no way in the world that could be good for us.
Wynton Marsalis
Flexibility is an essential part of Jazz. It's what gives Jazz music the ability to combine with all other types of music and not lose its identity.
Wynton Marsalis
Jazz is democracy in music.
Wynton Marsalis
I always read all these books about the slaves. My mother is very educated. My father would talk to us like we were grown men. We never knew what he was talking about half the time.
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
I always like to play very contemporary concepts of swing right next to New Orleans music because it highlights continuum.
Wynton Marsalis
Jazz music is the power of now. There is no script. It's conversation. The emotion is given to you by musicians as they make split-second decisions to fulfill what they feel the moment requires.
Wynton Marsalis
