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!
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!
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AmusantTranscription
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]