Wynton Marsalis Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

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
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
Jazz is the nobility of the race put into sound; it is the sensuousness of romance in our dialect; it is the picture of the people in all their glory.

Wynton Marsalis
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
Definition of jazz:
A swinging dialogue between concerned parties whose philosophy is "Let's try to work it out."

Wynton Marsalis
In music and life serious listening forces you to recognize others. Emphatic listeners almost always have more friends than other people, and their counsel is more highly valued. A patient, understanding listener lives in a larger world than a nonlistening know-it-all.... The humanity in a sound... comes from understanding the soft and hard parts of life.

Wynton Marsalis
I don't need what you hate. Give me what you love. And if that costs you too much, at least give me what you like.

Wynton Marsalis
I believe that to know the essence of a thing requires returning as closely as possible to the origin of that thing. The passage of time tends to quietly erode meaning and enthusiasm. The farther you move away from the sun, the colder it gets.

Wynton Marsalis