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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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Wynton Marsalis
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: October 18
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Trumpeter
New Orleans
Louisiana
Wynton Learson Marsalis
Enough
Jazz
Mean
Morality
Think
Musician
Thinking
Serious
Practice
Means
Firsts
Virtuosity
First
Sign
More quotes by Wynton Marsalis
I feel that for years of teaching in the country and reading criticism in books, I feel like the things most needed in our culture are the understanding of the meanings of our music. We haven't done that good of job teaching our kids what our music means or how we developed our taste in music that reminds us and teaches us who we are.
Wynton Marsalis
Certain music, jazz in particular, has the ability to make you a better citizen of the world. It helps you expand your world view and gives you more confidence in your cultural achievements. Improvisational jazz teaches you about yourself while the swing in jazz teaches you how to work with others
Wynton Marsalis
Ethics are more important than laws.
Wynton Marsalis
Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures.
Wynton Marsalis
The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel.
Wynton Marsalis
The only justification for looking down on anyone is that you're going to stop and pick them up.
Wynton Marsalis
I have absolutely no idea what my generation did to enrich our democracy. We dropped the ball. We entered a period of complacency and closed our eyes to the public corruption of our democracy.
Wynton Marsalis
I had to figure out how to survive in New York, and most of my time was occupied in getting an apartment and getting money. A lot of older jazz guys looked out for me and found me gigs and places to stay.
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
If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying.
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
There's the tradition in jazz of having the “Battle of the Bands” and you do not want to get your head cut when you're playing.
Wynton Marsalis
I never minded giving my opinions. They are just opinions, and I had studied music and I had strong feelings. I was happy for my opinions to join all the other opinions. But you have to be prepared for what comes back, especially if you don't agree with the dominant mythology.
Wynton Marsalis
The musicians, Duke Ellington, his thing was not about separating himself from the rest of America. Louis Armstrong - go to the forefathers of our music - Jelly Roll Morton - they're not preaching a separatist agenda. They're not taking their music and saying, This is for me.
Wynton Marsalis
The arts speak across epochs. If you think that people started to build a cathedral in 1315 and the people worked on that cathedral, it wasn't going to be finished until 1585. So they were thinking 200 years from now. Maybe by the time I die, this wall might be put up.
Wynton Marsalis
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
I'm just lucky to have the type of friends and musicians and people dedicated to my music that I do.
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
The best way to be, is to do.
Wynton Marsalis
The young very seldom lead anything in our country today. It's been quite some time since a younger generation pushed an older one to a higher standard.
Wynton Marsalis
