You Are Creative—Winton Marsalis [Longer Commentary]

Marsalis knows firsthand the challenges of being a creative artist. He grew up in a musical family, and he began playing the trumpet at a young age. He showed early promise, and he was accepted to the Juilliard School. However, Marsalis struggled to find his own voice as a musician. He felt pressure to conform to the expectations of others, and he was afraid to take risks.

It was not until Marsalis moved to New Orleans that he began to find his own voice as a musician. He was exposed to the rich musical tradition of the city, and he began to experiment with new sounds and ideas.

Marsalis’s experience is a reminder that creativity is not always easy. It takes courage to be creative, and it takes the willingness to take risks. However, the rewards of creativity are great. When we are creative, we are able to express ourselves in a unique and meaningful way. We also connect with others on a deeper level, and we help to make the world a more beautiful place.

In the style of Winton Marsalis, I would say that creativity is the lifeblood of the musical arts. It is what allows us to express ourselves, to connect with others, and to create something new and beautiful. When we respect our own creativity and the creativity of others, we are helping to build a more just and equitable world.

Marsalis’s friendship with the historian Walter Isaacson is a testament to the power of creativity to bring people together. Isaacson is a white historian from the Midwest, and Marsalis is a black jazz musician from New Orleans. Despite their different backgrounds, they found common ground in their love of music and their shared belief in the importance of creativity.

The Abyssinian Mass—Wynton L. Marsalis

Marsalis is going back to church. The 52-year-old Grammy- and Pulitzer-winning trumpeter, the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, has created a sprawling work called Abyssinian: A Gospel Celebration. The piece, which amalgamates secular and sacred music, is currently on a 16-city tour.

“All the musics are related.” That’s a good way to get into the Abyssinian Mass—nearly two-and-a-half hours long, with intermission. This composition digs deeply into what Marsalis would call “the soil” of the black church: its shouts, its dirges, its spirituals, its hymns of praise. With this work, he celebrates the seminal influence the church has had on the music of black Americans, and the continuing pull it exerts on his own artistic and spiritual life.

Marsalis used the joyful stylings of the African-American gospel tradition to deliver a musical message of universal humanity. He says he tried to put it all in there: God and Allah, exultation and the blues, Saturday night and Sunday morning.

“The Abyssinian Mass tries to cover a lot of different types of music and put them together and show how they come from one expression—as the mass itself is about everyone has a place in the house of God.”…

—Wynton Marsalis and Geoffrey C. Ward. Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra—regarded as one of the world’s best big bands—is surrounded onstage by the 70-voice Chorale Le Chateau. It takes its name from Damien LeChateau Sneed, the 34-year-old choir director and conductor of the mass. Sneed is a producer, arranger, conductor, teacher, keyboardist and sought-after gospel music director. He handpicked 70 of the top gospel and opera singers in the country—ranging in age from 21 to 70—just for this tour. He says he plans to re-assemble this dream team for future projects.

“The choir brings the fire and the choir brings the truth to the Abyssinian Mass,” he says. “The choir brings the spirit, it’s like the haaaaaa, the breath of God.”

Additional Wynton Marsalis Quotes

“Jazz is something Negroes invented, and it said the most profound things—not only about us and the way we look at things, but about what modern democratic life is really about. It is the nobility of the race put into sound … jazz has all the elements, from the spare and penetrating to the complex and enveloping. It is the hardest music to play that I know of, and it is the highest rendition of individual emotion in the history of Western music.”

—Wynton Marsalis [Quoted in Jet (1985), Volume 69, Issues 14-26] p. 172.

“Today you go into make a modern recording with all this technology. The bass plays first, then the drums come in later, then they track the trumpet and the singer comes in and they ship the tape somewhere. Well, none of the musicians have played together. You can’t play jazz music that way. In order for you to play jazz, you’ve got to listen to them. The music forces you at all times to address what other people are thinking and for you to interact with them with empathy and to deal with the process of working things out. And that’s how our music really could teach what the meaning of American democracy is.”

—Wynton Marsalis

“Because jazz musicians improvise under the pressure of time, what’s inside comes out pure. It’s like being pressed to answer a question before you have a chance to get your lie straight. The first thought is usually the truth.”

―Wynton Marsalis, Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life

“The most prized possession in this music is your own unique sound. Through sound, jazz leads you to the core of yourself and says “Express that.” Through jazz, we learn that people are never all one way. Each musician has strengths and weaknesses. We enjoy hearing musicians struggle with their parts, and if we go one step further and learn to accept the strong and weak parts of people around us and of ourselves, life comes at us much more easily. A judge has a hard time out here.”

―Wynton Marsalis, Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life