THE VALUE OF VALUES: (profanity alert):

Q: You're 60. You're getting all these honors, which must be gratifying. But we're still in the middle of this pandemic. What's your mood? Are you feeling reflective? Thinking about your youth?

A: When I saw Terence Blanchard's opera, I went back in my mind -- he and I were together in seventh grade in an honors band. We were the two saddest trumpet players in the band. I remember we looked at each other and said, "We've got to do better than this." And when I saw him come out on stage at the end of his opera, I felt full -- the journey that everybody's taken out here. Of course, some of the members of our generation have passed: Wallace Roney; that hit me. (Roney, the trumpeter, died of complications from COVID-19 in March 2020.) I stayed at his house in D.C. even before I moved to New York. We were 17, 18; we were young.

So it's kind of wistful, but not really. We're all still working in the music and we're still serious about it. To receive any kind of honor -- I feel gratitude, for me and for jazz institutions as we're trying to get all this stuff off the ground and make sure the music has an institutional base. I'm just honored by it. But I don't look at it in the context of "I was young and now I'm old." I felt like I was old when I was young, and now I feel younger. I felt much older when I was younger than I feel now.

Q: Why did you feel old when you were young?

A: My thinking was unique. I didn't know a lot of young people who thought what I thought. I thought about playing the music.

Q: Meaning, jazz.

A: We were all playing pop music, too. But I was trying to play the music and I stuck to the music. And this was always considered to be traditional and old-fashioned. I was a young man -- 18, 19, 20 -- defending the values of the music. So now I'm older and there are many more young people around who understand the value of values. So I feel younger.

Q: You were mentored by all these older people, and now you mentor so many young people. You're an educator. You've become the mentor, the elder.

A: I don't really look at it like that, because the generations function differently now than they functioned earlier. The technological revolution gave young people a base of knowledge that older people don't have. But yes, I was always so much younger than anybody else. I used to crack a joke: "I was 19 for 15 years." People were calling me `sonny' when I was 40. I knew so many older people.

I was always teaching younger people, and I was being taught by older people.

Q: Name three teachers who shaped you in an essential way.

A: First, it would definitely be my father. Then my theory teacher when I was in high school: Dr. Bert Braud, a great, fantastic teacher -- unbelievable. He taught me so much about theory and that kind of thing. And, let's see, of the jazz musicians -- man, I learned from so many of them. I would say John Lewis and Gerry Mulligan, together, both of them. And Art Blakey was a great teacher, too. Plus, from an intellectual standpoint: Albert Murray, Stanley Crouch, and Ralph Ellison. Those three. I was learning from all of them at the same time.

Q: Why John Lewis and Gerry Mulligan?

A: They were both very interested in my development and they taught me different sides of things. Of course, about music: counterpoint, arrangement, history. They also would speak to me very honestly about a range of subjects, including racism, America. I just had the benefit of their wisdom, and they would speak very frankly, listen to my pieces, tell me what they thought. It was an uncommon investment in a younger person.

Q: Were they very critical?

A: Of course they were. Because they were holding me to a standard. To be critical is a sign of respect. And, yes, they were very critical. But they also were very supportive.

I always tell my students about Gerry. One time (in 1993), we both played at the Ravinia jazz festival in Chicago, and he listened to a 45-minute movement of this piece I'd written called In This House, On This Morning. And about 17 minutes into it, I wrote a passage that had minor ninths at the top of a voicing. (Marsalis sings a bit of it.) Very dissonant! So Gerry stood and listened to the whole 45 minutes, and as I walked off, he looked at me and said, "Exposed minor ninths at the top of a voicing. Damn, you have balls."

So yes, he would be critical, and he also would be supportive.

I was raised by jazz musicians. My father was critical. He was a teacher. Teachers can't be shaking your hand and making you feel okay about who you are all the time. The love they have for you is underneath it. And if you don't understand or feel that, then you're not going to get the type of instruction that they can give you.

Q: Is there a single lesson you were taught that has shaped you, and that you pass on to your own students?

A: (He pauses.) Yeah, by my father. One lesson he always had about being a student was, "You can bring a horse to water, but you can't make him thirsty." That was always the thing: If you want to know about this, you'll know about it. If you don't, you won't.

That's the thing about being a student, is the freedom to learn: "If you don't want to learn, I can't make you." That was the thing he would say all the time. And there's a lot of those sayings that musicians have said to me. I could give you a hundred of them.

Q: What's another one?

A: Tell me a musician you want me to quote.

Q: Elvin Jones

A: Oh, man. I would go to Elvin's house all the time. I would go to Elvin's house at like 1 in the morning and stay 'til 5. Elvin was absolutely my man. The nights I hung with Elvin -- there's so much. I always called cats, but Elvin would call me. And he would always say the same thing: "Keiko (Jones's wife) has two lobsters here that's ready to be et." It would be 1 o'clock, 1:30 in the morning. I would make sure I went up there to Central Park West; he lived in the same building with Max (Roach).

Elvin treated me like I was his son; I used to always hang with Elvin, talking with Elvin. The main thing I learned from Elvin is the respect he had for the music and for people. Because Elvin's stories were always about people: Tyree Glenn, the trombone player, or (trumpeter) "Sweets" Edison, who was my man from when I was in high school. Elvin had millions of stories, man, deeply soulful stories about all the musicians: Trane, Miles, Monk.

One time we were playing a gig, and, man, it was loud. I was trying to play with Elvin -- my chops started to bleed, right? Damn. And I told him, "Elvin, it's kind of loud." And he answered me (Marsalis imitates Jones's squeaky, gravelly voice): "All you have to do is say something. Anybody can be told something, including me." Direct communication, right? It didn't mean he played softer, but that's what he told me.

Q: What else?

A: Somebody in the group said they wanted to solo -- a rhythm section member. They said, "I want to play" -- meaning, "I want to solo." And Elvin said, "You been playing all f[****]ing night!"

Elvin said he was in the Village Vanguard, and somebody came to him when he was playing with Trane, and said, "You know, a lot of people don't like what y'all are playing." And he said, "Well, they better start liking it, cuz we're gonna keep playing it."

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