Wynton Marsalis Quotes

In contrast, traditional classical music starts from an abstract musical schema. This is then notated and only expressed in concrete sound as a last stage, when it is performed.

After conducting Wagner, Beethoven's triple concerto is like taking an Alka Seltzer.

When we first started playing we did a lot of rehearsing. We used to write out everything. In fact, that's the way everybody rehearses: we play the tunes and improvise.

To be a good improviser, you have to study composition as a parallel. Because what improvisation is, on a high level, is spontaneous composition.

That is basically me, and although I have done many things in my life - conducting, playing piano, and so on - what is fundamental is my being a composer.

So writing a song is much harder than doing a classical piece for me, because in a classical piece, I can just let the mood dictate what's going to happen.

A Beethoven symphony should be rehearsed like chamber music, only for a lot more people.

Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.

The real architecture happens within the works themselves, and that was done by the composer. That's where the real skill is. In putting together a program, you're more a curator, but that's important as well. And then the interpreting of it is where our big job is.

In the U.K., classical music is composed by individuals and written down. Indian music is based on certain sequences called ragas. When I perform live, 95% of the music is improvised: it never sounds the same twice.

A symphony is no joke.

The thing I realised about composition is, we remember most composers for four bars of music. Four singable bars of music. Pretty much any major composer from Debussy to Ravel to Mozart to whoever else - you can kind of hum it.

Part of what I enjoy about writing classical music is communicating through the score and collaborating with such amazing musicians.

I'm a composer like every maestro on this earth.

Improvising is writing, too - there was no music and now there's music. So that's composition. And any time you take any sort of a performance liberty, you're making a compositional choice. I don't know a serious performer who hasn't made compositional decisions, who hasn't engaged in the art of composition.

My whole life, I've been watching conductors. I was 7 the first time I played with a conductor. Seeing the ones that do it well, it's an amazing thing.

I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill.

I know that John Adams has had a very hard time directing French ensembles.

I always dreamed of writing in an orchestral context. But when you finish a piece, you want to hear it. So we played everything with Phish.

I can take any series of numbers and turn it into music, from Bach to bebop, Herbie Hancock to hip-hop.

To speak about notation as the only way that you can guarantee structure of course is already very suspect.

As many times as I have done 'Marriage of Figaro,' I have never been able to ask Mozart what he intended in this piece.

I'm an interpreter of music.

Do you know that my very first experience as a composer was a 'Concerto for Accordion?'

A melody is not merely something you can hum.