Zitat des Tages von 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.
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.
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.
This rebuilding of New Orleans gives us the perfect opportunity to see if we're ready to extend the legacy of Dr. King.
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.
Maybe the preoccupation with technological progress has overshadowed our concern with human progress.
I play piano and drums very poorly and French horn and tuba all equally as bad.
I'm not a person who writes really abstract things with oblique references. I look at abstraction like I look at condiments. Give me some Tabasco sauce, some ketchup, some mayonnaise. I love all of that. Put it on a trumpet. I've just got to have the ketchup and Tabasco sauce. That's my attitude about musical philosophy.
Many a revolution started with the actions of a few. Only 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence. A few hanging together can lead a nation to change.
Whenever you face a man who's playing your instrument, there's a competition.
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.
Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures.
When did we begin to lose faith in our ability to effect change?
We always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation.
I believe in professionalism, but playing is not like a job. You have to be grateful to have the opportunity to play.
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.
What I really have in my head, my imagination, my understanding of music, I never really get that out.
I sounded like myself. People be saying I sound like Miles or Clifford Brown.
The musicians I respected were much older than me. I expected them to cut my head, and they did.
My older brother and myself always played together in bands, but we never knew we would be professional musicians.
Trumpet players see each other, and it's like we're getting ready to square off or get into a fight or something.
Swing is extreme coordination. It's a maintaining balance, equilibrium. It's about executing very difficult rhythms with a panache and a feeling in the context of very strict time. So, everything about the swing is about some guideline and some grid and the elegant way that you negotiate your way through that grid.
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.
It was Dr. King's tireless activism that fostered our modern way of relating to one another.
When people dress well, they play well.
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?'
We looked up to our father. He still is much greater than us.
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.
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 nerves are a problem on trumpet, because when you mess up everyone can hear it. Just remember most people are too polite to say anything about it. That should calm your nerves.
I became a man in New York. New York made me the musician that I am and the person that I am, so it's impossible for me to say I regret having lived there.
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.
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.
You need a team. You need people to push you. You need opponents.
Duke Ellington always had a style: original, clean with interesting color combinations. He had an artist's eye.