Branford Marsalis Quotes

If he's a true symphony artist, he knows better than that because he knows that the only truly creative musician is the jazz musician.

Part of what I like to do with Brainfeeder is to get the younger kids hearing jazz, because they don't know where to go to really hear it. Brainfeeder gives me a platform to put out people like Kamasi Washington or Austin Peralta.

If you don't already know about jazz music, how would you be exposed? How would get an opportunity to find out if it spoke to you? If you get exposed to it enough, you might find a taste for it.

I was really trying to sell to people who hate jazz: to make a case for the art form as youthful and energetic, not the sort of rarified intellectual activity it's painted as.

I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.

As a kid, I used to go see all the jazz players, Oscar Peterson, Stan Kenton, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespe.

I would not describe myself as an avid jazz fan and I am not a jazz musician myself. However, that is not to say that jazz does not play a vital and important role in my life.

Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does.

It's a mystery to me why everybody doesn't love jazz. I've never been able to figure that out.

But sometimes that title 'jazz' can vex people who think they know exactly what jazz always is and will be.

The history of jazz for the last 45 years has come through the Monterey Jazz Festival stages. I think there's developed a legacy and an aura around the festival.

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be some jazz.

I believe deeply that jazz is still a very vital music that has much to say, not just to eggheads, or whatever the musical equivalent of an egghead is, but to ordinary people.

I missed jazz, kind of. And by the time I came to it in life, it was too intimidating to enjoy thoroughly.

Jazz fans love Miles and I love him for a myriad of reasons, but the overviews are always too simplistic.

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.

I knew even if I'm a cowboy, I'm going to be involved in jazz in some way.

To most jazz critics I was basically Kenny G.

Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it.

I don't worry too much about the fundamentalist principles that are in almost any discussion about jazz.

Kenny G is not real jazz. I don't even think Wynton Marsalis is real jazz. I don't think Harry Connick Jr. is real jazz. If there is such a thing as real jazz, The Lounge Lizards is real jazz, Henry Threadgill is real jazz, Bill Frisell is real jazz, you know?

At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music.

People who don't do jazz think it's black magic. But really, it's just a matter of getting used to it. It's fun to gamble. The trick is not to fall back on the things you've done before.

I never studied jazz technically; I just know and love the music.

Today jazz is still very much alive. Everywhere I go there's a new generation of musicians.