Wynton Marsalis
American jazz musician and educator
Wynton Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American trumpeter and composer. He has also worked in classical music.
Attributed
edit- The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel. [1]
- I had a trumpet, but I didn't want to be a trumpet player. I wanted to be some type of athlete or in some type of scholarly activity, be a chemist or something—I had my little chemistry set, and I like playing with it.
- Flexibility is an essential part of Jazz. It's what gives Jazz music the ability to combine with all other types of music and not lose its identity.
- I think that virtuosity is the first sign of morality in a musician. It means you're serious enough to practice.
- The reason why the music is important is that it's an art form— an ancient art form— that takes in the mythology of our people.
- Some stances are just conducive to swinging. If I stand up straight for too long it's harder to swing. Plus my feet hurt. [2]
- (about rap and hip-hop) They take your drawers off for you, they show your ass, they sell bullshit, they call themselves 'niggaz' and the women 'bitches' and 'hos' and it's fine with everybody. That's what the essence of decadence is. [3]
Quotes about Wynton Marsalis
edit- Wynton Marsalis' skills have grown as fast as his ambition, and he is the most ambitious younger composer in Jazz.
- Jon Pareles "Review/Jazz: Wynton Marsalis Takes a Long Look at Slavery," The New York Times (4 April 1994) C-13.
- How you feel about Wynton Marsalis may indicate how you feel about jazz. To some fans he’s been a kind of saviour, restoring the music’s essence by reconnecting it to its roots in blues and swing, after its post-1960s fragmentation into fusion, free, world, acid, smooth, etc. But to others, his neo-conservatism is actually anti-jazz, restricting its evolutionary energy and creating ‘mausoleum music’. But no one doubts Marsalis’s authority, sincerity and talent. His virtuosity made him famous when he was barely out of his teens, achieving the unprecedented feat of winning Grammy awards in both classical and jazz categories in the same year. In fact, his passion for the trumpet first led him to jazz. Growing up in New Orleans in the 1970s, Marsalis was a mere dabbler in funk until his classical trumpet teacher introduced him to such jazz masters as Clifford Brown. His imagination was fired by a music that combined individuality and virtuosity, forged in African-American experience. That devotion to the heritage and expressive power of jazz still informs everything Marsalis does. It’s why he has fiercely decried the sort of all-purpose dumbing down which, to him, misrepresents the legacy of such African-American heroes as Armstrong, Ellington and Monk. As the trumpeter berated a critic: ‘We are not some hip sub-culture for your entertainment. Jazz is the most intelligent music of all time.’
