Quote

The bandstand is a sacred place.

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
Bandstand
Jazz
Sacred
Place

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

Image
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
Image
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
Image
Everything about the swing is about some guideline and some grid and the elegant way that you negotiate your way through that grid.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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
Image
We looked up to our father. He still is much greater than us.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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
Image
Maybe the preoccupation with technological progress has overshadowed our concern with human progress.
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
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
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
Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
Jazz is democracy in music.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
Blues is like the roux in a gumbo. People ask me if jazz always has the blues in it. I say, if it sounds good it does.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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
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
If you want to be different, do something different.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
I feel like a lot of the fundamental material, I've assimilated. So now the question is: Am I going to really get into my spiritual inheritance of music and really develop my abilities?
Wynton Marsalis
Image
I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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