Music Quotes by Wynton Marsalis

I dress up a certain way because I respect the music.

— Wynton Marsalis

Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance.

— Wynton Marsalis

A beat is a moment in the life a groove.

— Wynton Marsalis

A musician's whole life is to listen.

— Wynton Marsalis

Jazz is democracy in music.

— Wynton Marsalis

Jazz music is the power of now.

— Wynton Marsalis

The heart of a music is its rhythm. The heart of rhythm section music is the rhythm.

— Wynton Marsalis

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

— Wynton Marsalis

Music is always for the listener, but the first listener is always the musician

— Wynton Marsalis

I try to put a lot of our music in my music - by that I mean of American music.

— Wynton Marsalis

Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.

— Wynton Marsalis

This music heals people because music is vibration, and the proper vibration heals.

— Wynton Marsalis

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

— Wynton Marsalis

I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.

— Wynton Marsalis

We learn a language through its song, and even if you don't have music you have the song of people you love's…

— Wynton Marsalis

I didn't have a philosophical understanding of music until I came to New York. I didn't understand how it applied to my…

— Wynton Marsalis

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

— Wynton Marsalis

When it comes to songs and music, yeah, people love to sing and dance and play music and tunes, and that stream…

— Wynton Marsalis

The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans…

— Wynton Marsalis

Jazz music is the power of now. There is no script. It's conversation. The emotion is given to you by musicians as…

— Wynton Marsalis

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

— Wynton Marsalis

No particular music makes me feel nostalgic. If it's great, it just keeps me in the present moment. That level of music…

— Wynton Marsalis

I hope it might help players have confidence in our own ways, and not to be afraid of them, as Bernstein showed…

— Wynton Marsalis

We created the spirituals. We created so much great music, jazz chief amongst our innovations, teaching us how to prize ourselves and…

— Wynton Marsalis

I never minded giving my opinions. They are just opinions, and I had studied music and I had strong feelings. I was…

— Wynton Marsalis

I remember when I wrote a piece, "Blood on the Fields," it was a while ago, it was about slavery and about…

— Wynton Marsalis

When I came to New York, to Brooklyn, I met Alvin Ailey and Stanley Crouch and August Wilson. They were always putting…

— Wynton Marsalis

The majority of the high schools and the public schools in N.Y.C. don't even have band programs. Hip-hop in a lot of…

— Wynton Marsalis

I love Gustavo Dudamel and I love what he does for classical music, and I love what he comes out of, El…

— Wynton Marsalis

New Orleans had a great tradition of celebration. Opera, military marching bands, folk music, the blues, different types of church music, ragtime,…

— Wynton Marsalis

“Today you go into make a modern recording with all this technology. The bass plays first, then the drums come in later,…

— Wynton Marsalis

He [Benny Carter] is all that every jazz musician the world over wants to be. He's performed 20,000 nights. How many shoes…

— Wynton Marsalis

“The thing in jazz that will get Bix Beiderbecke out of his bed at two o’clock in the morning, pick that cornet…

— Wynton Marsalis

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

— Wynton Marsalis

The musicians I respected were much older than me. I expected them to cut my head, and they did.

— Wynton Marsalis

I'm just lucky to have the type of friends and musicians and people dedicated to my music that I do.

— Wynton Marsalis

What I really have in my head, my imagination, my understanding of music, I never really get that out.

— Wynton Marsalis

My older brother and myself always played together in bands, but we never knew we would be professional musicians.

— Wynton Marsalis

“The best musicians know this music isn't about "schools" at all. Like my father says, "There's only one school, the school of…

— Wynton Marsalis

My mother always took my brothers and me to music lessons. There were six children. Our parents attended our concerts and encouraged…

— Wynton Marsalis