Wynton Marsalis Quotes

If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying.

You need a team. You need people to push you. You need opponents.

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.

It's harder to build than destroy. To build is to engage and change. In jazz, we call progressing harmonies changes. Changes are like obstacles on a speed course. They demand your attention and require you to be present. They are coming...they are here..... and then they are gone. It's how life comes. Each moment is a procession from the future into the past and the sweet spot is always the present. Live in that sweet spot. Be present.

The real power of Jazz is that a group of people can come together and create improvised art and negotiate their agendas... and that negotiation is the art

If you want to be different, do something different.

Jazz music is the power of now. There is no script. It's conversation. The emotion is given to you by musicians as they make split-second decisions to fulfill what they feel the moment requires.

Those who play for applause....Tha t’s all they get.

Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance.

Love is the spiritual essence of what we do. Technique is the manifestation of the preparation and investment as a result of the love.

I always like to play very contemporary concepts of swing right next to New Orleans music because it highlights continuum.

The best way to be, is to do.

The only justification for looking down on anyone is that you're going to stop and pick them up.

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.

We're blues people. And blues never lets tragedy have the last word.

Even in these times, there are still neighbors that will turn their backs on neighbors.

Jazz music is America's past and its potential, summed up and sanctified and accessible to anybody who learns to listen to, feel, and understand it. The music can connect us to our earlier selves and to our better selves-to-come. It can remind us of where we fit on the time line of human achievement, an ultimate value of art.

Jazz music celebrates life! Human life; the range of it, the absurdity of it, the ignorance of it, the greatness of it, the intelligence of it, the sexuality of it, the profundity of it. And it deals with it. In all of its... It deals with it!

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

How great musicians demonstrate a mutual respect and trust on the bandstand can alter your outlook on the world and enrich every aspect of your life, understanding what it means to be a global citizen in the most modern sense.

Let the critics criticize and let the doers do.

A beat is a moment in the life a groove.

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

Don't bullshit' just play.

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