“What I've learned how to do as I've gotten older is to take all of the information that I have, and push it aside, and try to distill each song into an emotional theme. The hardest thing that I've ever had to learn how to do in playing music is use the sound of my instrument to create an emotional effect.”

American trumpeter and composer

Wynton Marsalis is an American trumpeter, composer, music instructor, and the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Born in 1961, he is known for work that spans both jazz and classical music, as well as for promoting those traditions, especially among younger audiences. He has won nine Grammy Awards, and his 1997 oratorio Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He is also the only musician to have won Grammy Awards in both jazz and classical categories in the same year.