Wynton Marsalis
The Convener
The room, the network and the deal, brings the right people together.
Wynton Marsalis reads as The Convener because his life's work is gathering people around jazz as a shared civic language. As artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, he built an institutional home for both a genre and a community, drawing musicians, educators, and audiences across cultural divides into one room. His advocacy for jazz as America's classical music is coalition-building of the most patient kind, aligning diverse stakeholders around common cultural purpose.
“Jazz is our national art form and as such, it objectifies a lot of our basic principles. America was blessed with a group of musicians and a social condition that produced this music.”
“All of this investment in the destruction of jazz is to further obscure a big lie that jazz uncovers. If we say our nation is based on human freedom, how do we reconcile the brutalizing ownership of a large underclass?”
“We built three concert halls in the middle of Manhattan. We have twelve education programs. We are so for real about our mission and achieving it even under this type of direst.”
The David Rubenstein Show: “Wynton Marsalis”
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