The musicians I respected were much older than me. I expected them to cut my head, and they did.
Wynton MarsalisJazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.
Wynton MarsalisMilk 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 MarsalisWhen I came to New York, to Brooklyn, I met Alvin Ailey and Stanley Crouch and August Wilson. They were always putting things in a philosophical context. All the great jazz musicians did, too. There was always a sub-context to what they were saying about music even though they would be very down home and earthy. So I started to develop, in addition to my power and ability to simply hear, a way to place myself in a time.
Wynton Marsalis