Wynton Marsalis Quotes (86 Quotes)

To put on your suit and play jazz music, ... knowing that many people in your audience have never experienced any jazz whatsoever, you have to believe beyond the fear of rejection. But that fear is part of creating.

Thank the good Lord for a job.

Trumpet players see each other, and it's like we're getting ready to square off or get into a fight or something.

It's like seeing something very scary to you, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's very moving... New Orleans is like the soul of our country, so we have to help.

Congo Square is the only place where African slaves were allowed to play their music, and is one of the most-important points

Whenever you face a man who's playing your instrument, there's a competition.

I've been told my house was fine - until the levee broke, ... That's when I got 2 or 3 feet of water in the first floor. ... I haven't seen how bad it is yet. I'm not looking forward to it.

Swing ultimately tests the limits of your desire to work with another to create a mutual feeling, ... And that is what's required from the many citizens of this country. I'm talking about sustained engagement in the issues forced by Katrina.

I've always loved Dave as a man and as a musician ... he's always just a gentleman, a man with a dignity.

Don't wish for someone else to do later what you can do now.

The bandstand is a sacred place.

And then the West Africans were allowed to play their music in Congo Square. That happened nowhere else in the United States. That was the true key ingredient. The music and all the traditions and the sense of self-worth that comes with being able to have your own art form and customs and traditions, that was a part of the Afro American that lived in New Orleans.

We looked up to our father. He still is much greater than us.

I am grateful to Mayor Bloomberg for giving me the opportunity to show that in this season of renewal, the people of the gulf region will rebuild and rejoice once again.

There are forces all around you who wish to exploit division, rob you of your freedom, and tell you what to think. But young folks can rekindle the weary spirit of a slumbering nation.

The first time I ever played the trumpet in public, I played the Marine Hymn. I sounded terrible.

When did we begin to lose faith in our ability to effect change?

I hope it might help players have confidence in our own ways, and not to be afraid of them, as Bernstein showed - things like hoe-downs, fiddle songs, and the art of improvisation, and the New Orleans funeral tradition, and call-and-response church singing, and the fact that the blues run through everything. And in our relationship to European music, in that we don't have to imitate it, it's a part of us, inseparable.

People have taken time out of their day and spent their money to come sit down at a concert. And it's jazz music-it's not easy for them to get to it. I don't want them ever to feel that I'm taking their presence lightly.

We've seen each other a lot of times, but it's the first time we had played ... and it was great,

We're not afraid of opposition - we welcome discussion.

Through first-class education, a generation marches down the long uncertain road of the future with confidence.

We're going to kill ourselves this week to bring the spirit of jazz (back to New Orleans).

These great jazz musicians set new standards for instrumental and vocal performance in the 20th century. Their work stands as a testament to the creative power of jazz. ...

Jesse Jackson drove that point home with blunt-force trauma when he assessed the scene in New Orleans and declared that it looks like Africans in the hull of a slave ship. ... we hear a lot of words, but we dont see a lot of action.

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.

a sense of loss, a great and deep loss.

Our city will come back, but it will take the entire country. When you take New Orleans from America, our soul equation goes down.

Only a few act - the rest of us reap the benefits of their risk.

What I really have in my head, my imagination, my understanding of music, I never really get that out.

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.

I believe in professionalism, but playing is not like a job. You have to be grateful to have the opportunity to play.

I hate auto-pilot playing, ... And I think you know the kind of playing I'm talking about.

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?

I believed in studying just because I knew education was a privilege. It was the discipline of study, to get into the habit of doing something that you don't want to do.

Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance.