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.
A musician's whole life is to listen.
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.
As a jazz musician, you have individual power to create the sound. You also have a responsibility to function in the context of other people who have that power also.
When you create change with your point of view, you have to be ready for what comes with that.
I believe in professionalism, but playing is not like a job. You have to be grateful to have the opportunity to play.
I try to find the core values that are so fundamental that they transcend ethnic identity. That doesn't mean I run from it. I embrace African-American culture and I love it and embrace it, but it is a part of a human identity. So I'm always trying to make a larger human statement.
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.
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.
When people dress well, they play well.
I think that the blues is in everything, so it's not possible to neglect it. You hear somebody go 'Ooh ooh oooh,' and that's the blues. You hear a rock n' roll song. That's the blues. Somebody playing a guitar solo? They're playing the blues.
I sounded like myself. People be saying I sound like Miles or Clifford Brown.
Because the blues is the basis of most American music in the 20th century. It's a 12-bar form that's played by jazz, bluegrass and country musicians. It has a rhythmic vocabulary that's been used by rock n' roll. It's related to spirituals, and even the American fiddle tradition.
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.
Trumpet players see each other, and it's like we're getting ready to square off or get into a fight or something.
Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance.
There's so much spirit of integration and democracy in jazz.
Don't worry about what others say about your music. Pursue whatever you are hearing... but if everybody really hates your music maybe you could try some different approaches.
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?'
I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.
Through first-class education, a generation marches down the long uncertain road of the future with confidence.
My daddy expected that my brothers and I and our generation would make the world a better place. He had lived in an America of continual social progress.
When did we begin to lose faith in our ability to effect change?
Maybe the preoccupation with technological progress has overshadowed our concern with human progress.
There really have only ever been a few people in each generation who step out, are willing to put themselves on the line, and risk everything for their beliefs.
Only a few act - the rest of us reap the benefits of their risk.
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.
What, other than injustice, could be the reason that the displaced citizens of New Orleans cannot be accommodated by the richest nation in the world?
The rebuilding of New Orleans is an important point in the history of the United States.
The best way to be, is to do.
We always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation.
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.
Thank the good Lord for a job.
The musicians I respected were much older than me. I expected them to cut my head, and they did.
You need a team. You need people to push you. You need opponents.
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.
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 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.
The first time I ever played the trumpet in public, I played the Marine Hymn. I sounded terrible.
I didn't want to get that ring around my lips from practicing the trumpet, because I thought the girls wouldn't like me. So I never practiced.
My older brother and myself always played together in bands, but we never knew we would be professional musicians.
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.
It was Dr. King's tireless activism that fostered our modern way of relating to one another.
This rebuilding of New Orleans gives us the perfect opportunity to see if we're ready to extend the legacy of Dr. King.
It's important to address young people in the reopening of New Orleans. In rebuilding, let's revisit the potential of American democracy and American glory.
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.
Don't wish for someone else to do later what you can do now.
If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying.Collection: Mistake
As long as there is democracy, there will be people wanting to play jazz because nothing else will ever so perfectly capture the democratic process in sound. Jazz means working things out musically with other people. You have to listen to other musicians and play with them even if you don't agree with what they're playing. It teaches you the very opposite of racism and anti-Semitism. It teaches you that the world is big enough to accommodate us all.Collection: Mean