Practice. As in dedication. Also see: integrity.
Every time he gets a chance, Wynton Marsalis lays a message on young people that requires no fancy instrument, just a solo commitment.
The jazz and classical trumpeter and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer got that chance recently at a Passport to Manhood program in the gym of the Boys & Girls Club of New Rochelle. He shot some hoops—hitching up his suspenders and complaining that he hadn't worked on his game in the two years it took to write his last symphony. He shared a meal of dirty rice, fried fish and potato salad, then delivered the challenge.
You have a choice, he told the teenagers. What you have to offer the world, he said, is your integrity. Be dependable. Keep your word. Commit to yourself to “be present," to focus on being “right here, right now." Watch what comes out of your mouth.
And work at it. That's how you get to be anything.
Marsalis worked from the same chart a few days later to the high school musicians from Ohio who stayed after a performance in Rose Hall of Jazz at Lincoln Center.
It's not easy, he said, practicing five or six hours while other kids were out having fun.
“It was lonely," he said, “but to improve, you have to sacrifice, and do what most of your peers are not willing to do. If it takes getting up before sunrise in the morning to study, or burning the midnight oil at night, do what you have to do. But it's also important to balance work with some type of social activity, or you won't have any life to express."
“What do you most like to play?" asked a young man.
Marsalis didn't hesitate.
“The blues, man, the blues. The first songs I learned to play in New Orleans were blues."
And that's how you learn to face the slings and arrows that come when you stand on principle.
“When I first came on the scene, some of the older musicians, who could play better than me, resented the attention I got," he said. “I was also very opinionated, so I received a lot of criticism. Many in my own field were against me. I just didn't realize it would last for 25 years."
Every time he gets a chance, Wynton Marsalis lays a message on young people that requires no fancy instrument, just a solo commitment.
The jazz and classical trumpeter and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer got that chance recently at a Passport to Manhood program in the gym of the Boys & Girls Club of New Rochelle. He shot some hoops—hitching up his suspenders and complaining that he hadn't worked on his game in the two years it took to write his last symphony. He shared a meal of dirty rice, fried fish and potato salad, then delivered the challenge.
You have a choice, he told the teenagers. What you have to offer the world, he said, is your integrity. Be dependable. Keep your word. Commit to yourself to “be present," to focus on being “right here, right now." Watch what comes out of your mouth.
And work at it. That's how you get to be anything.
Marsalis worked from the same chart a few days later to the high school musicians from Ohio who stayed after a performance in Rose Hall of Jazz at Lincoln Center.
It's not easy, he said, practicing five or six hours while other kids were out having fun.
“It was lonely," he said, “but to improve, you have to sacrifice, and do what most of your peers are not willing to do. If it takes getting up before sunrise in the morning to study, or burning the midnight oil at night, do what you have to do. But it's also important to balance work with some type of social activity, or you won't have any life to express."
“What do you most like to play?" asked a young man.
Marsalis didn't hesitate.
“The blues, man, the blues. The first songs I learned to play in New Orleans were blues."
And that's how you learn to face the slings and arrows that come when you stand on principle.
“When I first came on the scene, some of the older musicians, who could play better than me, resented the attention I got," he said. “I was also very opinionated, so I received a lot of criticism. Many in my own field were against me. I just didn't realize it would last for 25 years."
