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–Wynton Marsalis
In this beautiful book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning musician and composer Wynton Marsalis explores jazz and how an understanding of it can lead to deeper, more original ways of being, living, and relating–for individuals, communities, and nations. Marsalis shows us how to listen to jazz, and through stories about his life and the lessons he has learned from other music greats, he reveals how the central ideas in jazz can influence the way people think and even how they behave with others, changing self, family, and community for the better. At the heart of jazz is the expression of personality and individuality, coupled with an ability to listen to and improvise with others. Jazz as an art–and as a way to move people and nations to higher ground–is at the core of this unique, illuminating, and inspiring book, a master class on jazz and life by a brilliant American artist.
Advance praise for Moving to Higher Ground
“An absolute joy to read. Intimate, knowledgeable, supremely worthy of its subject. In addition to demolishing mediocre, uniformed critics, Moving to Higher Ground is a meaningful contribution to music scholarship.”
–Toni Morrison
“I think it should be in every bookstore, music store, and school in the country.”
–Tony Bennett
“Jazz, for Wynton Marsalis, is nothing less than a search for wisdom. He thinks as forcefully, and as elegantly, as he swings. When he reflects on improvisation, his subject is freedom. When he reflects on harmony, his subject is diversity and conflict and peace. When he reflects on the blues, his subject is sorrow and the mastery of it–how to be happy without being blind. There is philosophy in Marsalis’s trumpet, and in this book. Here is the lucid and probing voice of an uncommonly soulful man.”
–Leon Wieseltier, literary editor, The New Republic
“Wynton Marsalis is absolutely the person who should write this book. Here he is, as young as morning, as fresh as dew, and already called one of the jazz greats. He is not only a seer and an exemplary musician, but a poet as well. He informs us that jazz was created, among other things, to expose the hypocrisy and absurdity of racism and other ignorances in our country. Poetry was given to human beings for the same reason. This book could be called “How Love Can Change Your Life,” for there could be no jazz without love. By love, of course, I do not mean mush, or sentimentality. Love can only exist with courage, and this book could not be written without Wynton Marsalis’s courage. He has the courage to make powerful music and to love the music so, that he willingly shares its riches with the entire human family. We are indebted to him.”
–Maya Angelou
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
September 2, 2008 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781588368119
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781588368119
- File size: 1296 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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June 1, 2004
Who better to teach us the basics of jazz than Marsalis, artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, and prize-winning historian Ward (Jazz: A History of America's Music)?Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from August 1, 2008
Marsalis, in whose first-person voice this book is presented (so attentively to speech rhythms, thanks to Ward, that the text seems transcribed more than written), may be the finest trumpeter alive. So when he says, as he has throughout a stellar career in classical music as well as jazz, that the latter is his first love, he demands respectful attention. Thats easy to give him for this loving, candid, almost reverential exposure of how jazz has shaped his life, from boyhood learning in veteran New Orleans banjoist-guitarist Danny Barkers childrens brass band to his present eminence as director of jazz at Lincoln Center. He does several worthwhile thingsdefining swing, explaining the musical language of jazz, realizing the blues as the American apotheosis of a universal expressive mode, describing the sensations of learning to play and keeping on playing, and hailing a bakers dozen of great jazz artistswith more feeling than most jazz critics. More, he explains the cutting remarks he spouted as a young turkthat have haunted him since and winningly reformulates the naive old wish for jazz to be a force of world reconciliation. What a honey of a book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.) -
August 15, 2008
Famed trumpet player, jazz composer, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Marsalis updates his earlier "To a Young Jazz Musician" and explains in lay readers' terms how jazz works as a diverse musical genre and, more important, how an understanding and appreciation of jazz can enrich one's life. In engaging prose (with some profanities in a few of the quotations from musician colleagues), Marsalis and Ward (coauthor, "Jazz: A History of America's Music") discuss jazz as an expression of both personal identity and American identity as well as the role of race in jazz. The narrative addresses a wide-ranging audience quite well and will appeal to musicians (jazz and otherwise), jazz aficionados, and readers who just want to know what that thing called jazz is. Including a nice mix of autobiography, musical explanations, sociology, and advocacy for jazz in a culture that, according to Marsalis, is far too focused on the least common denominator in music, this work is highly recommended for all public and academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 5/1/08.]James E. Perone, Mount Union Coll., Alliance, OHCopyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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