This symbolic place in our city should represent a great New Orleanian, or it should be an open space that represents our latest prevail and how people helped us, not a person who had nothing to do with our city and who indeed fought against the United States of America and lost.

Wynton Marsalis

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

Wynton Marsalis

swings new-orleans play

The best way to be, is to do.

Wynton Marsalis

best-way motivational way

Milk in a mother's breast-that's cool. Milk in a mouth-that's cool too. But milk in my trumpet? Not so cool. I have to play that thing.

Wynton Marsalis

mouths mother play

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.

Wynton Marsalis

sweet graduation past

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.

Wynton Marsalis

opposites play mean

Let the critics criticize and let the doers do.

Wynton Marsalis

doers criticize critics

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.

Wynton Marsalis

offers jazz knows

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

Wynton Marsalis

real people art

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.

Wynton Marsalis

self past art

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

Wynton Marsalis

passion spiritual love-is

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.

Wynton Marsalis

splits music decision

If you want to be different, do something different.

Wynton Marsalis

teens healing want

Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about.

Wynton Marsalis

armstrong jazz music-is

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.

Wynton Marsalis

music understanding mean

Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance.

Wynton Marsalis

style music substance

Everything comes out in blues music: joy , pain , struggle . Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance.

Wynton Marsalis

pain struggle joy

Music is the art of all the invisible things that are real. Art, emotion, spiritual essence, consciousness - these things are hard to prove. Music helps you to focus on your sound. We understand that for very young kids.

Wynton Marsalis

real spiritual art

In Jazz, improvisation isn't a matter of just making any ol' thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and vocabulary. There's no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others.

Wynton Marsalis

vocabulary music choices

You can reach a situation where things of intelligence and refinement and culture can be considered elite, and things that are crass and ignorant can be considered to be real and of the people. And when you begin to have the mass of populus striving for something that's not worth striving for, then tremendous amounts of energy go into...the maintenance of that which is worthless.

Wynton Marsalis

ignorant real people

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.

Wynton Marsalis

swings balance feelings