Wynton Marsalis could have soared as a trumpet phenomenon.
But his passion has always included elevating and sharing the music he grew up in a family of musicians — learning early on that you have to always give it your all.
“If one person is there, play like its millions of people. And just come every night and every time you have the opportunity to play your instrument with the type of gratitude and intensity that indicates to whoever is there, ‘Hey, we’re here to do this,’” Marsalis told NY1.
Marsalis helped found Jazz at Lincoln Center in 1987, where he would lead the construction of its own home at Columbus Circle.
It opened in 2004 on his birthday.
“It just happens to be on my birthday, but it’s not. It just fell; it just worked that way. We’re dealing with construction schedules and everything. They’re not changing all of that to make it land on my birthday, believe me,” he told NY1 in 2004.
Now at age 64, Marsalis is looking back. While there were early naysayers that the first concert hall in the world dedicated solely to jazz was not sustainable, he says there were many early believers.
“I think when you understand what the music is and where it sits in the American mythology,” he said. “There were no tricks or bells and whistles. This is what we do. It comes from the soul of our country. We need this. The civic responsibility people felt it had.”
And with civics in mind, Marsalis has often described how jazz is like democracy.
“Well, first you have improvisation, which is your individual right that you have to develop and understand who you are,” he said. “When you have swing, which teaches you how to work with other people who you may not agree with, but you have to find a way to get along and they too have an individual right and perspective and then you have the blues which is sometimes things don’t work out. And then you have the Afro-Latin perspective, which is grooves that require you to consider another way of thinking.”
Marsalis says you put that together, you’re going to be a good citizen.
When asked what he looks forward to when he comes back to New York after traveling on the road, Marsalis said the “energy.”
“I always ride the subway. You know, the amount of people who are there. New York, it’s just the energy. It’s nothing comparable as far as the speed and the pace, and we just have more of everything,” he said.
One more reason Marsalis says he’s never nervous on stage — only grateful for the audience and the ability to reach them through music.
“Yeah, I’m thankful. It’s an unbelievable blessing and I’ve been able to do it the whole time,” he said. “But now I’m nervous. Can I make it up the stairs?”
While Marsalis will step down from his role as artistic director next year, he will continue to perform with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra on special occasions.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ny1.com ’
