Wynton Marsalis's EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW at the 2023 Verbier Festival

medici.tv

Watch more exclusive interviews and concerts of the 2023 Verbier Festival at https://iiil.io/iRJj    Christian Thompson — Host    Interview recorded at medici.tv's Studio 30 (Verbier, Switzerland) in 2023.    © JBP Films  Dive into the heart of classical music with medici.tv! Get closer than ever to the artists you love and have an unforgettable experience with 100+ live webcasts each year and 1,800+ videos.  A rare and exclusive selection of concerts, ballets, operas, documentaries, master classes, behind-the-scenes and interviews!

Transcript

00:00 (upbeat piano music)

00:03 - You know, when I was asked to do this job a few months ago,

00:13 I would never have imagined that I would have the chance

00:16 to spend half an hour with this guy, Wynton Marsalis.

00:20 Your father was a musician, and you traveled a lot with him.

00:22 - I didn't travel with him that much,

00:24 but I grew up watching him, watching him teach.

00:27 - And with his band?

00:28 - Not with his, I watched his band, I saw them play.

00:30 I was a kid, I mean, I wasn't qualified to play with them,

00:33 but he taught us in high school.

00:35 He was our high school instructor.

00:37 And the first day of class, one of his great teachers,

00:39 he set four chairs out in the middle of a room,

00:41 and he said, "Describe what you see."

00:44 So of course, each of us was describing what we saw,

00:46 'cause we thought the test was, what do you see?

00:49 Then I was, "Who do you see up in the ceiling?"

00:50 I see this, another person, oh, I see a mirror.

00:52 Another person, I see a window.

00:54 Another one, I see a chalkboard.

00:55 I see a, well, look, on the ground, what do you see?

00:57 I see this and that.

00:58 So when you get finished, and we all described what it was,

01:01 we thought he was going to critique what we saw.

01:04 Well, you said this, but actually this is there.

01:06 When we finished, he said, "Do any of you doubt

01:09 "that you're all sitting in the same room?"

01:12 So we started laughing,

01:14 because that was his philosophical perspective.

01:17 We all know we're in the same room,

01:19 but y'all all saw something totally different.

01:22 How could that be?

01:24 And he said, "Remember that."

01:25 Now, multiply that by eight billion,

01:29 and that's what being alive is like.

01:31 So that, from a philosophical standpoint,

01:34 I grew up with him, and he was my principal teacher

01:38 and my model.

01:38 I looked at him, and he was a very spiritual guy,

01:41 very serious about music, taught people with no fanfare.

01:45 Loved to teach in the hood, loved to teach people

01:47 who didn't have a lot of education,

01:50 but he was always a source of education.

01:55 The very first time I talked to you,

01:56 which was about a month ago in Paris,

01:59 we were with the country doctor, who's your friend.

02:02 - The country doctor, man.

02:04 - And the country doctor said to me,

02:08 "Christian, what's your biggest challenge?"

02:10 Now, in my real life, I work for the Orchestra Paris

02:14 in a concert hall, which is up in the top northeast of Paris,

02:19 and I said to him, "I wish that my hall was in a place

02:22 "that people could get to more easy."

02:24 And he immediately launched into me and said,

02:26 "No, no, no, that's completely wrong.

02:28 "The placement of this concert hall

02:30 "is the best thing that you got."

02:31 - Yeah.

02:32 - And it really challenged me.

02:34 - But it is the best thing that you have.

02:37 People get in the hood, or they get in the community,

02:40 and they don't wanna be community people.

02:42 They wanna talk about it.

02:43 They wanna find the one person for the community

02:45 and put them on the brochure, or they wanna do

02:49 some type of fake education that's not gonna help anybody,

02:53 but what they don't wanna do is engage with people,

02:55 talk with people, listen to people.

02:56 Then they think, "Oh, we can't program complex music,

02:59 "or we have to now program some type of something

03:01 "that's on the radio, or we have to do this."

03:03 You don't have to do that, but you do have to be humble

03:05 and reach out to people and expose them

03:07 to what you are trying to do

03:09 and listen to what they would like to have done.

03:11 And it is a concert hall.

03:13 People don't expect they're gonna go into a concert hall

03:15 like they go to a dance club,

03:16 but they do have to be educated about it.

03:20 I remember the first time my mother took us

03:22 to a concert hall, man, we were the only black people

03:24 in the hall.

03:26 This was in the 1970, 1969, when black people

03:31 were in the symphony in New Orleans.

03:34 We had our clothes on, man, we'd get our stuff

03:36 off the Sears catalog, and we felt like

03:37 we were from another planet.

03:39 And she didn't grow up with classical music.

03:41 She didn't necessarily even wanna hear it,

03:42 but she set an example for us.

03:44 And we sat there and we listened to it,

03:47 and we said, "Damn, there's only one black guy

03:48 "in the orchestra, and he plays flute."

03:50 So me and my brother, we were laughing.

03:52 I ended up meeting the guy at a music camp

03:55 four years later, Richard Harrison, fantastic flutist.

03:59 And that was the beginning of me listening

04:00 to orchestral music.

04:01 And she just took us on a whim.

04:03 It was four of us.

04:04 So it was a struggle for her to get all of us out,

04:07 and we sitting down, we kids, man,

04:08 we don't wanna listen to whatever it was

04:10 the orchestra was playing.

04:12 And the communities are that way.

04:13 Embrace them and bring them in.

04:15 Have classes, reach out to people,

04:17 bring them, let the hall function

04:19 the way your hall functions, great in the community anyway,

04:22 but bring them into the music.

04:23 And don't feel like because something is sophisticated,

04:26 a person who's not exposed to it is never gonna like it.

04:28 Those people will take great pride in that

04:30 if you reach out to them.

04:32 And it's gonna take a longer time.

04:34 It'll be one time you reach out,

04:35 and next year the hall is full.

04:37 No, but in 10 years, man, the people will defend that hall.

04:41 - But the goal shouldn't be to fill the hall.

04:43 The goal should be that it's an asset for the community.

04:46 - Fill the hall.

04:47 - 'Cause when it's an asset for the community,

04:49 it's gonna fill, 'cause there's not that many seats.

04:51 Think of how large the community is

04:53 and how many seats you have.

04:54 - I imagine you've told this story before.

04:57 I heard an interview where you talked about your mom

04:58 when you got scholarships to go to Juilliard

05:01 and do all this stuff.

05:01 And what she said to you really touched me

05:05 in terms of getting you back on the ground somehow.

05:07 - Well, she was really more to academic schools,

05:10 like Yale, and I got to, not to music schools.

05:12 She said, "Oh, I see you got from Yale,

05:14 "and you got from, ooh, these are some really big schools,

05:17 "honey," she said, "but you know,

05:19 "I don't want you to just think about your education,

05:21 "but think about the substance of your education.

05:24 "I can give you a degree that says I am a fool,

05:26 "and you'll run all over the world

05:28 "with just so much pride showing your degree.

05:30 "What is the substance of your education?"

05:33 My mom was real smart, though.

05:35 I mean, she was like the salutatorian

05:37 or something of her class.

05:37 She was very, she was on top of stuff philosophically.

05:44 - I wanna talk just for a moment about,

05:47 I know very little about your world, your jazz world.

05:50 I've never engaged, unfortunately,

05:53 but there is one thing that combines different worlds,

05:57 which is improvisation.

05:59 And I think that if you'd asked any of those 60 kids

06:01 in the junior orchestra to stand up and improvise,

06:03 they'd have run under the nearest music stand

06:06 to hide from it.

06:07 And I wonder what they can learn from you,

06:10 or what in general they can learn,

06:12 because it shouldn't be something to be scared of,

06:14 but generally people in our world are scared of it.

06:17 - Well, the failure of Western education

06:19 has been to learn from the people they enslaved.

06:23 And that failure is,

06:26 because in order for them to enslave the people,

06:30 they had to adjust the philosophy.

06:32 So the Christianity and all that could go along

06:34 with you exploiting the person,

06:35 so those people were less than people.

06:38 Now, in the 20th century, if all these people come up

06:40 who are from these type of cultures,

06:42 who have other sets of skills,

06:44 are they human beings all of a sudden?

06:45 Well, you gotta make that negotiation.

06:47 Now, are we gonna teach our kids

06:50 what are the greatest achievements of their way of thinking?

06:53 So far, the answer to that in our country,

06:55 I can't speak to other countries, has been no.

06:58 One day that will change.

07:00 To be on the cutting edge of not exhibiting

07:03 a type of Western arrogance is very difficult,

07:06 because arrogance is a thing that you feel like

07:08 if you don't have that, you don't have anything.

07:11 And you don't realize that once you let that go--

07:13 - Like it's obligatory to have.

07:15 - It's like when I was talking to my bass player

07:17 about a tradition I didn't understand,

07:19 telling him what they needed to do.

07:21 It's just so arrogant and entitled.

07:24 And him as a kid telling me,

07:26 "Man, you don't know what anybody is playing.

07:28 "Like, what gives you an opinion about it?

07:32 "Like, did you ever listen?" - Go find out and come back.

07:34 - "Did you ever listen to a drum?"

07:36 So then, the tendency is to talk down to someone

07:40 who you think you're superior to.

07:41 And the kids, they're kids.

07:45 So whatever the adults teach them, they'll learn.

07:47 I'm not telling them anything about improvisation.

07:49 They talk every day, they improvise.

07:51 If you teach them those skills, they will learn it.

07:54 If you don't, they won't.

07:55 - Before you came here to Verbier,

07:58 what did you expect or what did you hope for?

08:05 - I think I've played maybe 5,600 gigs in my life.

08:09 I started playing gigs when I was eight years old.

08:14 I played regularly through high school

08:15 from the age of 13, I joined a band,

08:19 and I played an average of 150 gigs a year.

08:23 I played in New Orleans with every kind of ensemble,

08:25 from the symphony brass quintet to the circus,

08:28 to New Orleans parade band, to a regular funk band,

08:31 to kind of jazz bands with college students.

08:34 On a Wednesday, I couldn't really play,

08:35 but they called me and I was playing.

08:37 Like Chick Corea tunes and stuff

08:39 that was sophisticated for us at that time.

08:42 And in my adult life, I've had the chance

08:43 to play with all kinds of masters, man.

08:46 Yaku Badi, great master from Ghana.

08:48 Paquito de Rivera from Cuba.

08:53 Changuito, I stayed in his house.

08:55 And Pedrito Martinez, and Hamilton Jolanda from Brazil,

09:00 and Nassir Shama from Iraq.

09:04 Deduzo Makatini from South Africa.

09:06 I consider all of them to be very close friends.

09:09 And Igo Boutman from Russia, I have many friends.

09:12 And even I know about the war and it's unfashionable,

09:15 you can't just act like your life stops,

09:18 because there's a conflict that you,

09:20 certainly as the type of musician I am,

09:23 I'm against all conflict and killing people

09:25 and subjecting people to injustice.

09:28 But your relationships are your relationships.

09:31 And I learned from them.

09:34 - My name's--

09:36 - Shh, you have to try and call me.

09:39 It really helps.

09:41 - Yeah, it's okay.

09:42 - I'm really sorry.

09:44 - Well, let me, maybe I should say that again,

09:46 because I don't want to get caught up in a--

09:48 I'm, maybe I'll--

09:50 - I'm really sorry, I don't know why that happened.

09:52 - Maybe I'll start answering that question again,

09:54 'cause I don't want to get sidetracked

09:55 into thinking about Ukraine and Russia.

09:57 - Yeah.

09:58 - It just wastes more time.

09:58 - Actually, you know what, you can, in fact,

10:00 because we had a kiss in here yesterday

10:01 and we spent the whole, and I think there's a,

10:03 you have an opinion and it's important.

10:05 - Yeah, well, okay, that was my opinion.

10:07 I feel like the arts have to be involved always

10:12 in diplomacy, because we don't carry weapons.

10:15 And we're not going to carry them.

10:16 And a military conflict, of course,

10:19 it's important to have a military,

10:21 'cause that's what the conflict is.

10:23 But we come in and we pour water on stuff.

10:25 We'll have different jobs.

10:27 And when we lose that over the rightness or wrongness

10:31 of a cause, and there are many wrong causes.

10:33 I gotta see your perspective, you know?

10:37 - But I'll tell you the story.

10:38 We spent 40 minutes with Yevgeny Kisin yesterday.

10:41 And he changed one of the pieces in the program

10:44 that he was playing in recital here

10:45 from a very mundane Debussy piece to a Polonaise by Chopin,

10:48 which he believes represents Chopin's vision

10:52 of a country at war.

10:53 And he made the statement.

10:55 And he didn't make it super public,

10:57 but people wrote to him afterwards

10:58 and realized what he was saying,

11:00 that he was really making a point.

11:02 - Right.

11:03 And you know, well, Afro-American opposition is always,

11:08 it's what it is.

11:09 We have a position of trying to realize democratic principles

11:14 against tremendous odds.

11:17 So we have always occupied

11:23 that position of not accepting a Western status quo.

11:28 And, you know, so far I've spoken on these things many times.

11:34 Every decade I write some type of piece

11:38 that deals with social, cultural, political awareness

11:42 and the need for participation.

11:43 Of course, from my perspective,

11:46 because it's all that I have.

11:49 But I feel I didn't have an opinion about Verbier,

11:52 but I don't have an opinion about people until I meet them.

11:56 I don't have an opinion about, I've learned over time.

11:59 It's like my opinion about Latin music.

12:01 I take the lessons to heart.

12:04 And when Carlos told me that,

12:06 I understood over the years of meeting people,

12:08 you don't know people, man.

12:09 You don't know who they are.

12:11 And the cliches you get or you hear

12:13 or things you got to be there.

12:16 Like the great sort of Neil Hurston,

12:18 great Afro-American writer says in one of her books,

12:21 "Their eyes were watching God."

12:24 You got to go there to know there.

12:26 So now I have an opinion, but then I, no.

12:30 I didn't think nothing.

12:31 - There's been a kind of running theme a little bit

12:35 with the discussions we've had in here about curiosity.

12:38 And I think that, you know,

12:41 the interviews I read of yours that you said

12:42 right from the beginning,

12:43 when you were gonna work with this guy or that guy,

12:45 you really dug in so that you were curious

12:48 about everything about that person

12:50 so that when you were there to do it,

12:51 you were there to do it.

12:52 And the way that you talk about politics in the world,

12:55 you talk about social issues and humanity

12:57 and your humility with that.

13:00 I don't want to put words in your mouth,

13:03 but for me, I think young artists in general

13:07 aren't as curious perhaps.

13:09 - You know, I don't know.

13:11 I teach a lot of kids and I love them

13:15 in terms of their curiosity and what they,

13:17 but I'm sure in the era they're growing up in,

13:20 I don't know that I understand it.

13:22 Like we didn't have the internet when I grew up.

13:24 Most of the things that are really influential for them,

13:26 we didn't have that much information at our fingertips.

13:29 So for me, there's more segregation by age now,

13:33 but there was a lot when I grew up.

13:35 So I don't know that, I always tell my students,

13:38 I don't know what they're thinking.

13:40 I listen to their music or I'll go online

13:42 and see what they're doing and where they're playing.

13:44 And they text me and tell me,

13:45 what do you think about this?

13:46 You know, even everything down to prompting chat GPT

13:49 to say something, instead of me,

13:51 what they said, I would say it.

13:53 I don't, I mean, they're creative

13:55 and they know a lot of things.

13:56 They come from different places.

13:58 If anything, I blame the problems they have on us.

14:02 I don't look at them.

14:04 I think that the world we have given them

14:07 has been a less than humane world, not kind, greedy,

14:12 might makes right money,

14:14 many decisions that lack integrity.

14:17 Most of the corruption in the world

14:18 is not because of some young people.

14:20 And the things that we have given them,

14:22 pornography, trash, certain types of things

14:25 that are not suitable for kids,

14:26 especially right in the cusp of their adolescence

14:29 that we sell readily to them happily

14:32 and celebrate executives who've made billions of dollars

14:35 in that trade, what we do with commercials.

14:38 I'm not mad at my younger people.

14:41 You know, I think that we need an integrity check,

14:43 but it's the integrity probably will have to come from them

14:47 because we have not shown ourselves to have that.

14:51 - So then the easy question is what role does music have

14:55 in that world you've just described?

14:57 - Well, music is consciousness.

14:59 So in consciousness, it can be any way.

15:01 It can be ignorant.

15:02 It can be, but it is consciousness.

15:05 So you learn how to speak your language

15:07 through the music of your language.

15:09 So the music is much more nuanced than the language itself.

15:13 That's why your intonation when you talk to me

15:15 determines how I hear what you're saying,

15:17 much more even than what you tell me.

15:19 - That's been a real pleasure.

15:24 And if there's one thing I could ask you to do,

15:26 it's just sign the wall behind you, if you wouldn't mind.

15:29 (upbeat music)

15:34 (upbeat music)

15:37 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Transcript

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