To a Young Jazz Musician Quotes

“And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it.”
― Wynton Marsalis, To a Young Jazz Musician: Letters from the Road

“And the thing about jazz, through all the business involved in practicing and improvement, it's always sweet: the improvement that you notice in the ability to express yourself, the feeling of playing, pushing yourself out into an open space through a sound, man. That's an unbelievable feeling, an uplifting feeling of joy to be able to express the range of what you feel and see, have felt and have seen. A lot of this has nothing to do with you. It comes from another time, another space. To be able to channel those things and then project them though an instrument, that's something that brings unbelievable joy.”
― Wynton Marsalis, To a Young Jazz Musician: Letters from the Road

“When you play, make sure you're honest enough to confront your own deficiencies. That's why practicing is a sign of morality in a musician. It means that you're willing to subject yourself to self-scrutiny of the highest order.”
― Wynton Marsalis, To a Young Jazz Musician: Letters from the Road