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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?'

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
Known
Excited
Father
Son
School
Musician
Great
Directors
Band
Heard
Ellis
High
Auditioned
Sure
Director

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

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We looked up to our father. He still is much greater than us.
Wynton Marsalis
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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
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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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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
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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
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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
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I'm just lucky to have the type of friends and musicians and people dedicated to my music that I do.
Wynton Marsalis
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This rebuilding of New Orleans gives us the perfect opportunity to see if we're ready to extend the legacy of Dr. King.
Wynton Marsalis
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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
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What takes its place is very dry education. And the tools that actually can teach you - singing and playing, learning how to participate with other people, spiritual richness - are replaced with a big emphasis on how to memorize things. That's such an incomplete education. Survival of the fittest used to mean being bigger and stronger.
Wynton Marsalis
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Jazz is democracy in music.
Wynton Marsalis
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For me as a person who's in the arts and as someone who understands the magnitude of our contributions and the price that was paid to contribute to that, that we just have not gotten that together. I will do all that I can to get in front of our kids, to try to teach them, but at a certain point the people have to want it and come towards it.
Wynton Marsalis
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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
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My older brother and myself always played together in bands, but we never knew we would be professional musicians.
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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Only a few act - the rest of us reap the benefits of their risk.
Wynton Marsalis
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Ethics are more important than laws. Which means that the exact note is less important than the feeling of the note.
Wynton Marsalis
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Those who play for applause....Tha t’s all they get.
Wynton Marsalis
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We all teach from that same frame of reference. We're like neighborhood - the people who have had the opportunity through this music to gain a platform and spread the message of this music, which is basically love in a form of communication that's honest and truthful.
Wynton Marsalis
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A beat is a moment in the life a groove.
Wynton Marsalis