Wynton Marsalis Quotations

Duke Ellington always had a style: original, clean with interesting color combinations. He had an artist's eye.

What I've learned how to do as I've gotten older is to take all of the information that I have, and push it aside, and try to distill each song into an emotional theme. The hardest thing that I've ever had to learn how to do in playing music is use the sound of my instrument to create an emotional effect.

Musicians like to converse. There's always interesting conversation with musicians - with classical musicians, with jazz musicians, musicians in general.

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.

Generally, when I wake up in the morning I set out a series of problems for myself and I write them down, and when I'm sleeping, my mind solves the problems. When I wake up in the morning, I have more clarity on the issue.

I'm not afraid of you being yourself. That's America.

I generally work right up to when I have to do something - I'm always doing a lot.

My father is a jazz musician, so I grew up hearing jazz. My parents loved it, but I didn't like it. It went on for too long. Yes, I had certain teachers that really inspired me, like Danny Barker, and John Longo. And I had no idea that I would have any impact on jazz.

The blues is always there. It's going to be hard out here, but it's all right. It's all right, and that's what the blues teaches you. You got to roll with the punches and find your equilibrium.

I think that when the education system started to be dismantled during the first Great Depression in the 1930s, we didn't recover from that.