Quote

And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it.

Wynton Marsalis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Wynton Marsalis
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: October 18
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Trumpeter
New Orleans
Louisiana
Wynton Learson Marsalis
Like
Soulful
Offer
Jazz
Offers
Playing
Somebody
Thing
Something

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

Image
I think that virtuosity is the first sign of morality in a musician. It means you're serious enough to practice.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
I have friends who will critique me much harder than any review.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
Milk in a mother's breast-that's cool. Milk in a mouth-that's cool too. But milk in my trumpet? Not so cool. I have to play that thing.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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
Image
We always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
This music heals people because music is vibration, and the proper vibration heals.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
The real power of Jazz is that a group of people can come together and create improvised art and negotiate their agendas... and that negotiation is the art
Wynton Marsalis
Image
The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
When it comes to songs and music, yeah, people love to sing and dance and play music and tunes, and that stream of consciousness that exists in music, nobody knows where that comes from.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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
Image
The nerves are a problem on trumpet, because when you mess up everyone can hear it. Just remember most people are too polite to say anything about it. That should calm your nerves.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
I always like to play very contemporary concepts of swing right next to New Orleans music because it highlights continuum.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
If you are serious about American culture and you are serious about Afro-American culture, you are in a lot of pain. You are not - you are not smiling about it.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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
Image
We learn a language through its song, and even if you don't have music you have the song of people you love's voice, and you'll notice that song in their voice.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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?'
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
We don't have the leadership or the understanding of the value of this, and when your political systems and your economic systems start to fail, it's only a cultural understanding that allows you to reconstruct them and to get back to who you are. For some reason, it hasn't dawned on us yet.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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
Image
My thing is, once you start to put a backbeat on your music or something that has a machine in it, you have popularity, but you lose the flexibility. And you lose a richness.
Wynton Marsalis