(intriguing music) - [Announcer] Welcome everyone, to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

(thoughtful music) (audience applauding) - Welcome everyone, to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

My name's Christina Hamilton, the Series Director.

Today, we are thrilled and delighted to bring together for a rare conversation, the iconic trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis and UM Athletic Director, Warde Manuel, for a conversation moderated by U of M's own, Managing Director of the Arts Initiative, Christopher Audain.

I wanna thank our partners in this endeavor as today's program is co-presented by our longtime faithful, dear friend, partners, and true jewel in U of M's crown, the University Musical Society.

Yes.

(audience applauds) Just a quick word of explanation to all of those UMS patrons who are here in the house tonight who don't know what the Penny Stamps Speaker Series is, the Stamps Speaker Series is a program of the Stamp School of Art and Design.

We look to present creative innovators like our distinguished guests today as a way for our students to connect directly with the connective leader...

Sorry, connect directly with creative leaders.

We're here every week at the Michigan Theater so check us out and join us on another date where there are brochures out in the lobby or you can get more information at pennystampsevents.org and join us anytime.

Wynton has actually been performing with UMS for 26 years now.

He actually first performed right here at the Michigan Theater in 1996 so we love full circle things because this is the first time that he's speaking live in the Penny Stamps series, which we're very excited about cause we've been trying for over a decade.

We did get a virtual event some of you may have seen last year but the reason that we are finally able to be here today in person with Wynton is because we are in the middle of a very special week.

This week is the UMS Residency with Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Wynton Marsalis.

They're here in Ann Arbor for the week doing all kinds of things with the University of Michigan community.

And this residency, I just have to let you know, it includes three public performances, master classes with students, K through 12 visits with Ann Arbor school students, Ypsilanti and Detroit students, and a collaboration with the Prison Creative Arts Project.

So these are very busy people collaborating here and then on Friday night, we have the incredible opportunity to see a performance of Wynton's "All Rise" at Hill Auditorium.

This is an original composition it blends musical influences, African chant, New Orleans Parade Music, Gospel, and Latin based music.

It's a 12 movement piece built on the blues structure and it is rarely performed because of the huge forces required to make it happen.

Over 200 people are going to be on stage.

The musicians, we are using musicians here from the University of Michigan, the U of M Symphony and Choirs, the UMS Choral Union, they have been rehearsing since the beginning of the year and all the pieces are coming together this week with Wynton and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

So if you don't have tickets to Friday, I advise you, hurry up.

There are still a few tickets left at ums.org and students in the audience, there are student tickets for $12 and 20 bucks, so get your student tickets right away.

They're also performing on at Hill Auditorium on Sunday with Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for their regular fair that they bring to Ann Arbor that everybody loves but on Saturday afternoon, Wynton and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra take the 50 yard line at The Big House with the Michigan Marching Band at the Penn State game so this brings us today, how spectacular, as we consider our Season of Thrive.

Today, we consider how artists and athletes both exemplify the height of human potential to thrive.

So please silence your cell phones and for a proper introduction of our guests, we welcome our great partner, the President of the University Musical Society, Matthew VanBesien.

(audience applauds) - Good afternoon everyone.

Thank you Christina, thank you everyone from the Stamps School and from Penny Stamps, we're really delighted to be here.

Thanks to all of you for coming out this afternoon, it's a great pleasure.

These are very, very special guests that I'm gonna introduce in just a second.

And Christina's told you about this week long unprecedented residency with Wynton and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra here at UMS but most importantly here in our community at the University of Michigan and throughout southeast Michigan.

We're incredibly proud to do this work because it's not just about great performances on stage, it's about real impact that we're trying to create with these extraordinary artists in a whole host of ways.

And that's what I think the arts really can be and can do in our world today.

So thanks that we have many of our supporters here this evening who have helped make this possible and I wanna thank them.

This is Wynton Week, #wyntonweek and so we're really, really proud.

So let me just introduce, tell you a little bit about the three guests who will be on stage tonight and then we'll welcome them for this Penny Stamps Talk.

It's going to be moderated tonight by my great colleague, Christopher Audain.

Chris is the Managing Director of the U of M Arts Initiative.

The Arts Initiative for those of you who are unaware, was created in 2020 with an aim to really not just elevate the arts here at Michigan, but make it really central to the University of Michigan's identity, our mission, what we're about, what we do, expanding access to the arts on campus and really making it a part of student learning and really part of the Michigan experience.

Chris came to us from Chicago, we recruited him from Chicago in the middle of the pandemic no less.

He was program officer for six years at the Alpha Wood Foundation, which is a private grant making organization that supports the arts, LGBTQ, and civil rights.

He's currently focused on the arts initiative startup phase and you're gonna be hearing more in the coming weeks and months about this arts initiative.

And we are delighted to be working with our next president on that in the coming weeks and months and I wanna thank Christopher for facilitating tonight.

Warde Manuel, also from the University of Michigan, joins us, Warde is of course, our esteemed Director of Athletics here.

Warde also, like our other guest, was born and raised in New Orleans.

He was a high school all American football player.

Came to U of M to play football under Bo Schembechler but he was a two sport athlete here at Michigan.

He's a three time alum.

He went on, I dunno if he's gonna talk about cooking school or not tonight, but luckily for us, he went on to have a distinguished career as a University Athletics Administrator here at U of M of course since 2016, but before that at the University of Connecticut.

So we're thrilled to have Warde here and Warde's family, Chrislan Manuel.

Warde's wife is a member of our UMS Board of Directors and we're thrilled to have her here with us tonight.

And then last but certainly not least, Wynton Marsalis, you know him as a world renowned trumpeter, band leader, composer, but he is really a leading advocate for American culture.

And he's not just an advocate here in this country but it's really all over the world.

His day job, day jobs, I should say, are to serve as the Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York and he's also the Director of Jazz Studies at the Julliard School.

Wynton was born in New Orleans in 1961, began his classical training on the trumpet at age 12, he was admitted to the famous Julliard School at 17, and we were just joking backstage not too long after that left to join Art Blakely's Jazz Messengers as a trumpet player.

So he's recorded 103 jazz and classical recordings throughout his career, he's won nine Grammy awards, including winning the Grammy Award for classical and jazz at the same time, twice, two years in a row, no one will ever do that again.

He's a Pulitzer Prize winner and he's also as is UMS, a National Medal of Arts recipient.

This is not just an amazingly talented individual, this is an extraordinary colleague, collaborator, a mentor, and I'm really proud to call him a friend.

Please welcome to the stage Wynton Marsalis, Warde Manuel, and Chris Audain.

(audience applauds) (audience applauding) - It's truly an honor and a privilege to be here tonight with you and to sit down and have this discussion.

Thank you so much for being here, Wynton and Warde.

I just wanna start the conversation with some connective tissue.

New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, the Paris of the South.

When we were backstage, I heard you were... You knew each other or your families knew each other.

Can you say a little bit about growing up in New Orleans, maybe a memory you have from back then?

- What I was saying earlier is that my mom told me when I was a child about Wynton and the Marsalis family and that she grew up with Wynton's father.

Cause she was the youngest of four, of four girls, and they all grew up with his father and and mother.

And so she was always proud to have known the family and always talked with a lot of admiration for who they were as people and what they were doing with music and what they were doing for New Orleans.

- And Warde went to Brother Martin and my cousin went to Brother Martin.

He's a little older than me and Warde is younger.

So it, when you grow up with somebody those years make a big difference.

But just to hear the New Orleans language and the way we talk with each other.

Cause we have a habit when we talk, we always touch each other, we always say, "Man, you know..." We have a new New Orleans way.

We do our thing that sometimes when we get in public, we start to behave.

(Warde laughs) But if you see us, we just talk it's like...

It's hard to express just kind of a flow and a love that we have for each other that's in our language and our way.

- Yes, it is.

- Can you say a little bit, maybe tell us a memory or a story you have from growing up.

Maybe you can think back to when you're 10 years old and what you're doing after school.

New Orleans, there's so much legacy there so share our story with us.

(Warde and Wynton chuckling) (audience laughs) (Warde and Wynton laughing) - Well, I played in bands all the time and I have a full range of stories I could hit you with, I'm trying to figure out what's appropriate for this moment.

(audience laughs) But I'll tell you a marching band story.

So I had a good friend, most of the black New Orleans that played, that if you didn't go to a public school, you went to Catholic School, you went to St. Aug.

So I went to a school called De La Salle, and we played football half times.

And when I was in eighth grade, St. Augustine High School, had four of the greatest trumpet players in New Orleans, Leroy Jones, Arden Jones, and Kevin Hayes, and Libo, John Roche was his name.

And we played in the funk band together called The Creators.

And the half time that we played, De La Salle played opposite of St. Aug.

They did a feature with the four trumpet players and they stood in front of us and played, and they all really could play.

And for the next four years they teased me and messed with me incessantly about how they cut our head and how they were better than us.

But I don't know if Warde is gonna tell you all this but in New Orleans the band, it didn't stand behind the football team.

And you could... You wasn't even so sure the football team was gonna win fights with the band.

It was a different... (audience chuckling) It's a different culture with all this stuff about band people being nerds and all that, we didn't have all of that.

(audience laughs) - My brother went to St. Aug and so St. Aug has a unbelievable band and do unbelievable halftime shows and I was the opposite, which is why we're here tonight.

I, growing up, played sports year round and so for me, I was immersed in the sports.

However, what I remember from my early childhood is going to the Jazz Fest in New Orleans, which if anybody come talks to me who's over the age of 22, I tell 'em go to New Orleans doing the Jazz Fest because it's a remarkable time to be there with all of the different tents, with different musicians playing, all the food.

You just get immersed in a culture, walking around on a racetrack, on the inside of a racetrack.

And so for me in New Orleans, those memories with my family and going to parades, and hanging out and doing things as a group, New Orleans is a very tight knit community, the families stay together.

And so those are my fondest memories relate to playing sports with my friends, and doing all the things that we do in New Orleans with our families.

- Great.

- We also played a lot of football.

You remember street football Cartigh?

- Yes, yes, I do.

- Cats, sometimes cats play on the neutral ground.

- Yeah.

- They had a lot more heart.

Sometimes they play a neutral ground where the traffic is so you had to really be concentrating on that.

- Yeah that's how we learned how to keep our feet in bounds.

(audience laughs) - So I'm hearing a lot about athletics and the arts, right?

And so maybe you could talk about how that was part of your upbringing, but also the difference in the commonalities between them.

The affinities that they share as someone who plays music and is a sports lover, and someone who, has been an athlete, and also loves music.

- Well, I think we all played ball.

Most everybody in New Orleans played some kind of ball so that's a baseline.

I think first just the excellence and the concept of you have a certain talent, like some people just could play when they started to play.

And then our teachers would, would tell us what we had to do to get better and we knew we had to work hard, and the same thing was true with our coaches.

When I played ball I had really good coaches, neighborhood coaches, high school coaches, coaches were always just good people.

And we're also music as a team, we all play together and we have different roles and functions, and the more you understand about someone else's function, the more successful you can be playing in a band.

If you're a trumpet player and you are aware of what a trombone player is playing or even what a flutist is playing, a tuba, you're gonna be better.

And I'm sure for an athlete, if you're a football player, if you're playing wide receiver, you understand about defense, you're gonna be better.

But I would like to know what Warde's, experience was just even before you got into high school, just playing park ball and then nard ball, and then getting it down.

- Yeah, it started early, back then when we grew up.

Sports, the park was literally a half a block from my house.

And I went down there when we first moved and the coach saw me and saw my size and he said, "Hey, you wanna join the team?"

And I said, "Well, I have to ask my dad."

So I ran home a half block, asked my dad, he walked back to meet the coach and I didn't have... Actually, I had a old catchers mitt that my dad had and that's what I went to my first practice with.

And the one thing that we talked about backstage that I think is true and probably true in general of coaches and and teachers of music, is how much they tell you the truth.

It's not a chance where you don't... That they're not telling you right away when you make a mistake.

And so the coaching and the feeling that people care and wants you to be the best, I remember from all my coaches.

Particularly, I had one coach when I was in little league and he was our baseball coach and he coached our all star team and all that.

And he just would not let you deal with a mistake, he wanted you to be better every chance you get.

And he taught that every time, every time you give your best even in practice.

And so now most of y'all know how Bo Schembechler was so I was accustomed to that from an early age.

And so it's one of those things that really rings true in music and in sports, that coaches really coach all the time, tell the truth, are honest about how to interact.

And I'd love for you to share what you talked about in terms of some of the ways you guys deal with them.

- That's what you're saying but now of course those types of things have such a bad reputation, right?

So it's always...

Cause the worst examples are always the ones that get the most publicity and it's always somebody goes overboard and of course you look at that.

But there's so many thousands and hundreds of thousands of people around the world who teach, who mentor, who coach, and who don't step overboard, who don't abuse students or people who don't...

But who will tell you something you don't feel like hearing.

And my daddy was definitely like that and he could just look at you and you just... (Wynton heavily breathing) I could be playing, he'd be like... (audience chuckles) He had the thing, he would always really say, "Son, what are you doin'?"

See, this is him.

(audience chuckles) That's his spirit coming around me now saying, "Son, what are you doin'?"

And he would tell you what something sounded like and he would, he set an expectation.

And I remember we, I'm older than you.

We started, there were very few, they were like...

The teams were all segregated also, I was from Kenner, I was not...

Didn't grow up in New Orleans.

- Yeah.

- But I remember we had a coach that had gone to college.

His name was Skip.

And for us, we didn't know a lot of people who had gone to college.

So we had a young coach who was maybe 25 and we were 12, 13, 11.

And man, we would just say, "Man, Skip went to college.

"Man, Skip went to college."

But Skip didn't, he didn't let no curing or none of that.

You couldn't do that on the park.

Nothing you did in your neighborhood, you could not do on the park.

And I remember he gave us some plays in football.

He was our football and I and our baseball coach.

But he gave us some plays.

You remember a long time ago, it was the first kind of printout you would get a blue ink kind of on a paper, and it was eight plays on blue ink and we were country so we couldn't believe it.

We were looking at it like was the Bible or something.

(audience laughs) Man, we actually got a printout of some plays we gonna run in a game.

So many of these early experiences and being on teams with people who struggle with different things, you learn so many things that are similar to music.

The only difference being of course with music is more just, it's more like talking and it's also in the realm of the invisibles.

That's my daddy telling me, "Stop talking."

Okay, quiet.

(audience laughs) - This is great, please keep talking.

(audience chuckles) So there's this improvisation that happens with jazz and there's one other affinity with athletics and the arts is rehearsal and practice, and so can you talk about all that goes into being prepared to meet the moment?

Different moments, the unexpected, and how you do that together with your teammates or your performers.

- See I want you to notice even up here, okay, Warde is passing it over to me, we working it out.

(audience laughs) So, and this is all a part of improvisation because he knows the type of love, respect I have for him, it is from a human standpoint.

So we, we just trying to figure out how we're gonna roll the information out and which one of us is gonna extemporise on whatever the other one is saying.

So when he looking at me, I'm trying to when you asking the question, he's trying to figure out now, "Okay..." Well you going so he's tossed it to me but he tossed the last one to me.

So I'm saying- - Live example of improvisation right here.

- You tossed me that last one.

So if I keep talking, my daddy gonna come back and say, "Man, be quiet."

(Warde laughing) (audience laughs) So if you gimme the baseline, how 'bout... - All right, so you want me to answer the question?

- No, no, no.

(audience laughs) Just you know we're talking about just the preparation and the baselines and the things we have like y'all have plays and you have things you know you're gonna execute but you don't really know what you're gonna see.

- Right.

- You know what you may see.

- Correct.

- And in our music, it's like that all the time.

We have a form, it goes around and around.

We have a set of harmonies, you have to know those harmonies.

We have a rhythm that's difficult to play, it's in six and it's four at the same time, you have to be able to play in that harmony.

We have a check down of who's leading a given moment happens.

The drummer is the president, you're following drummer no matter whether you like it or not.

The rhythm section does things, we have a body that improvises with you.

And when the rhythm section is playing and a soloist has solo too long, they do a thing called breathe.

So they... (Wynton scatting) (Wynton deeply inhales) (Wynton scatting) Now when they do that breath that means please stop playing.

(audience laughs) And many times people with bad manners just keep playing.

Then the other horn players start to play riffs, (Wynton scatting) to some repeating phrase that's generally obnoxious and too loud, that means please stop playing.

And if you continue to go through that, then the bass player will drop out (audience chuckles) and then it goes on from there.

But there's so many things that are going on when we're playing in terms of dealing with rhythms, dealing with harmonies, dealing with... And the more you know, the more you are prepared to improvise and combine the things you know, in a way that allows you to interface with ensemble but also the more willing you are to accept change and moments of chaos and be okay with the fact that you are not the one who's ever gonna organize it.

That's why I love them in athletics when they say, "Well what did you think about such and such place?"

"Man, you know, we have to see the tape."

Cause when you play a gig, you live, you really don't know what... You concentrating on the moment and everything is going on.

And sometimes you think something sounds good and it doesn't, and sometimes you think it's terrible and it's the best you played.

So that's kind of the similarities in form, instruction, how we deal with the moment.

- Yeah, it's similar in sports.

If you, you watch the last game, Blake Corum bounces into a hole, the hole's not there and he goes around the outside and runs for 20, 25 yards for a touchdown.

JJ will drop back, he wants to pass, he'll decide to run because things break down or things open up that you weren't planning on being there or things are not there that you wanted to be there in terms of a open receiver or whatever he's doing.

Same things happen on defense, people take chances and make a play.

Sometimes you take chances, you don't make a play, and then you're sitting on the sideline.

But that happened to me once or twice, (audience laughs) standing next to Bo for a few plays while I learned my lesson, if you will.

But it's those kind of things that I think are very similar.

And basketball, it's a sport that is really based on playing off of each other and playing with the defense gives you and going what you do with your cuts and who's open and those kind of things.

Those are not... You plan on a certain way but if they don't play you a certain way, then you have to adjust.

And so ad libbing, audibles, things like that occur all the time based on what somebody sees or how a play develops.

And so in sports, you prepare.

Jim and the team are finishing up practice right now and they're preparing for certain things to happen.

As I tell my beautiful, beautiful wife all the time when she asks me about, "Well why are they running that?"

I say, "Every play is designed to score a touchdown."

every defense is designed to stop 'em at the line of scrimmage or the incept the pass.

I mean the other team is trying too, in that sense.

So there's always something that you have to adjust to in particularly during the game that you're trying to prepare for but you're adjusting on the fly.

- And I think that, that leads us to the importance of having a perspective.

I like when somebody will say, "Well, so and so has ice water in their veins."

Or they maybe a shooter, they're missing shots.

- Yeah.

- If you the shooter keep shooting.

- Right.

- Get a rebound.

- That's right.

- Let's figure something else out.

- Yeah.

- But when you're trying to control the uncontrollable, you can't be in the moment because it's difficult to be in a moment of absolute chaos with a plan because the plan is the only thing that's saving you from that chaos.

- [Warde] Yeah.

- And once that plan breaks down, man, you just out there running around just like, "Okay, my plan..." - Gotta take that deep breath.

- You know what I'm saying?

- How is rehearsal prepare you for chaos?

Both in performing in front of people, but also what has it taught you about how to live your life broadly?

- Well, I'll take this one first I guess.

(audience laughs) Chaos and things happening in ebbs and flows.

I mean, I keep picking on football because it's football season, but Jim, the team, myself, you're as good as each week goes.

And so from that perspective, you plan and you focus.

And that's why people ask the kids legitimately in press conference after a game, "Well have you looked at the tape of Penn State?

"Are you prepared?"

And they said, "No, we're focused on this week, "we'll start that tomorrow."

And because if you're not, if you're looking ahead, then you gonna get beat, right?

And so you plan for what you have in front of you, to, in essence, plan is to win, right?

This is what we're trying to do.

The adjustments come soon after the ball's kicked off, you're starting to adjust on both sides of the ball, whatever you're playing.

And so a plan is good until it doesn't work.

As Mike Tyson's famous saying, "Everybody has a plan until they get hit in the mouth."

And at that point in time you have to adjust.

- Well that's, I think that it's...

If you think about that we are living in absolute chaos but these seats make us feel like it's organized though.

(audience laughs) But now what if it was only thoughts, man, if we knew what everybody was thinking right now?

Ooh, ooh.

And entropy is always the tendency of things to become random so we're in chaos and we're constantly trying to give form, order, and logic to something that we can understand to increasing moments of... And the chaos is not just there and it's going away, it's becoming more chaotic at every passing second.

So there's a way, if you think about it, you can only see in front of you and a little bit on the side of you.

If you have a football helmet on, you really can't see anything, you have a very limited range of vision.

But if you think about all your senses, you could notice a person, a quarterback or something is in a pocket and he just kind of knows something is wrong.

And life is that way.

We're taught many times because we deal with form and systems, and order and logic, we are taught that for some reason these things are more dependable than how we feel about something or our sense of the thing or...

When in actuality the things that are most tangible to us are actually far less sophisticated than those untangible things.

They seem more real because they're much easier to access.

If I give you a piece of music, it's easy for you to look at it and read it and say, cause it is a G but if somebody plays a G and I say, "What are you gonna play now?"

You're like, "Okay, well what do you want me to play?"

You start figuring out things and you have to use, you think of all of our senses, we can hear, if we have all of our senses seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, we use those senses all the time.

If you think about always developing those senses and your extrasensory senses, that's what playing the music is like.

And it also, it comes to bear on moments in athletics.

We see it all the time, "Can you believe the ball bounced this way?"

It bounced that way a lot of time for the same person or same group of people because they develop a thing with their team a swing, a way or sway, a way to not be so committed to one direction that they can't recover.

And I used to always love seeing Barry Sanders, the running back because when he would get in the hole, he had a way he would kinda just be dancing like physics, just, "Okay, I don't know where I'm going "but all of this is around me."

And I feel like in life if we become more cognizant of what is around us and how little we know, and how much we need everything at our disposal to make good decisions but that we have to make decisions.

And that we're always assessing, not so much that we become fearful but that we become more confident that okay, we have a lot of things and we also have other people.

Sometimes you look at other people to figure, well...

Cause sometimes on the bandstand I can't even hear what's in the front, so I'll look down and see, okay, if Ted is smiling, it must be good.

(Warde laughing) So, that's kind of a long answer but it's about kind of mastery of moments it's much more difficult than we think.

On a football field or basketball field, the defense is the opposition, it is providing chaos.

But there are other things too, there's nerves, there's this, there's that, there's little things that arise that take you outta your thought like maybe you are angry at a teammate or the coach told you something you didn't like, or somebody is looking at the game and you want to impress them, or...

Things take you out of a moment of concentration and when you have to execute in a moment, you need that focus in that, in that concentration.

While you also need, it's paradoxical, the freedom to do what I'm doing in this chair just, hey, it could be coming from anywhere.

- Yeah and I think that's an excellent point because you asked a question about, how does it relate to life?

I mean, in general, having dealt with 300 pound men trying to kill you and coming from every direction, you kind of adjust to well each time, each moment.

And I think as an Athletic Director with 29 sports and dealing with different sports, and different ups and downs and different issues that are there, you have to adjust and get into the moment of what that is in front of you as opposed to trying to think about something else.

If you, if you compartmentalize, for lack of a better word, into that moment, into what you're doing, into how you need to adjust and handle the problem, that's what sports has taught me about how to manage and how to deal as things come at you in different ways.

It's really, you're always on your toes, for lack of a better word, to try to deal with what's in front of you, whether it's family, whether it's work, you're always adjusting.

- Yeah, Wynton, you talked about that we're living in chaos despite us sitting here peacefully together, protest art and the arts broadly are often at the forefront of pushing change in society and challenging the status quo.

And sports too, certainly have a platform and have been a platform for protests and reflection for major change.

Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, Megan Rapinoe fighting for gender equity pay, gender pay equity.

How do you see the current landscape and the place of artists and athletes in advancing and impacting our society?

- I think that those who are concerned about the issues and who want to participate and who feel moved to do that, should do it.

If they're move to do it and if they can do it.

And some places you can't do it, so you have to decide, am I gonna give up my life now for this cause?

Which sometimes people make that decision.

We are not at that point in our country in this particular time, we have had times where that was the issue and we perhaps may have those times again.

When we look around the world, we see places where people are put in that position and they make that decision, they make the ultimate sacrifice.

But I don't think we can tell people they should do it because everybody does not have a talent or skill for doing it, an interest in doing it, it's not always, they don't want to sacrifice.

It's that their thing might be they can really draw a flower or they can make people laugh and maybe they have a... And then the other thing they may, don't have a social consciousness, it's not a crime.

A person like Muhammad Ali always comes to mind, how much we loved Muhammad.

And I loved him but I remember seeing him once pull a gorilla out and punch it, and tell Joe Frazier and made Joe mad.

Okay, he didn't mean to do that.

He didn't understand, he's a human being, but he sacrificed a lot.

But he also had other moments and we all do, it's easy for us to demand perfection from other people.

They should do this or they ought know that.

My father used to always hear us talk about ball players since we, "Man this so and so quarterback is sad, "or this one man, they can't play."

Really harsh critiques, he would go, "Man, the best critique in the world is demonstration.

"I've seen you play."

(audience laughs) - Well, it brings up that sense that people have, if you're passionate about something and as Wynton said, desire to have change and want to affect change, you can do it in different ways.

I mean, we all have those things that we're passionate about.

Either we lead or we support, or we guide people to affect change in different ways.

And in sports we've had a lot of that shown, in music, we've had a lot of that where people have spoken out because they have the ability and the platform to speak out and those things, I think when they do that's courage.

When student athletes come to me with an issue, I always thank them for bringing it to me and having the courage to step up and say, "Hey, here's a problem that we have."

And I think in our society too much, we look at things through our lens as opposed to the person who has a different perspective on the issue that they're dealing with and that they're passionate about and I think we all have a right.

Here in this country, we are diametrically opposed politically.

You're either a D or a R most cases, 90 plus percent.

And we don't listen, we don't hear, we don't tend to open ourselves up to the dialogue that needs to occur for us to get better as a city, as a county, as a state, as a country in the world.

And that's why we're dealing with some of the problems we're dealing with now.

And so I think we all have the things that we're passionate about and I think we all have our ways, as Wynton talked about, to do that and respecting people for their perspective.

It's too much tension around some of the things that affect all of us.

In that I think we need to try to solve and anybody who steps up will, be it a musician, an athlete, or somebody who's not either one of those, to me, they have a right to speak their mind.

This is what our country is based off of and we should appreciate and applaud when people do.

- Well, I want to go with what was saying about the matter of passion and that it's...

Listening is an art, it's a skill that has to be developed, and it's difficult because we all think we are listening, all of us in here but when people start to say something you don't want to hear, you're listening changes.

(audience laughs) "I hear what you're saying."

And I was saying before in jazz, a lot of times people play things, it's not what you would play, it's not what you want to hear, you don't feel like hearing it but the music forces you in a space where you have to hear them, it doesn't mean after you hear them, you agree with them.

But the respect that is required to try to come to some type of common mean, maybe you don't, but we have...

It's too much profit motive in dissension.

If we sit up here and we start cussing at each other, man, everybody gonna know.

(Warde laughs) "Boy, you should have saw that musician "running from that big man."

(audience laughs) You know what I'm saying?

He did grow up in New Orleans.

- Right.

(audience laughs) - But if we don't, if we come together then that's not really news, man, it's okay.

So, I think that paradoxical thinking is not something we are... We are not good at teaching acuity.

And this it's all the mystic trainings, and this is jazz, this is what the blues is, it's two things that seem like they're the same thing but they're not.

To be able to discern is a power.

That's like the famous and the Bible, Solomon and the two prostitutes brought their baby.

"Well, which one was the baby?"

I don't know.

How do I know which one it is?

Acuity, figure out what these things are, sort of peel back the layers of things and take the time with thinking and with listening, and trying to figure things out.

And you're always on that razor's edge with our form.

It's never...

This is a type of democracy, that's not been tried to my knowledge in the world, maybe in the ancient, ancient world, worlds that we've forgotten about that existed, it was something even greater than this, we don't know.

This is a difficult thing and we have so many voices now in the pot there's just noise, man.

And it's a lot of trolling going on too.

And the trickster is always at play and that trickster is just having a good time.

- Always.

- Teasing you, messing with you, playing what you have, making fun about serious subjects so it's acuity is important to teach ourselves how to listen and teach our younger people how to think and how to discern.

And these are very serious things to learn how to do and they take a lot of examples and a lot of...

It takes a lot.

It's not an easy, a simple skill.

- No, it's not.

- And it's a skill that playing sports and playing music teach you.

I mean, you talk about people don't listen but how much you have to listen if you're playing music together or working with your teammates.

We're facing a time of such decisiveness and isolation but the arts and athletics do such a great job of convening people, I would argue the best.

What are some of the current challenges to bringing people together, and what do you see as your role as leaders in building community and bringing people together for learning, creating, and experiencing moments of joy?

- Well, it's evident on a Saturday in Ann Arbor.

People are together under Amazing Blue and they're talkin' about supporting their team.

That always makes me feel good because I know there's so many differences between the people that are sitting in the stands and I feel, it's always a special feeling on a Saturday when I get to the stadium and I see everybody getting together.

And I see people from different backgrounds and beliefs that love seeing each other on that Saturday and tailgating and talking about the love for Michigan and being back in Ann Arbor or the love of football or sports, love of the University and the things that they bring together.

So for me, it's a joy by the time I get down on the field and I see the stands starting to fill and I look down on the stadium when I get to my box to watch the game and I see everybody come together, and so that's to me the time to put all that away.

And I think a lot of our fans, even though they yell at our team and may... And definitely yell at the other team, it's a time for them to feel that relief of having to deal with all the other things they'll deal with three and a half hours later after the game's over.

And so for me it's always special when I'm at any of our venues and I see people come together, it really means a lot to me because we know what's happening in the world.

We know what's going on around us and all the things that we are dealing with and it gives people that ability to take a break from it and just come together.

- Yeah, I think that we love our teams.

we love sports, we love our form of music and we like to go to dances and hang with the people we like and the people that we don't like, we don't wanna hang with them.

We don't wanna see them.

I think our education system suffers great inequalities.

And I've been around our country for so long in so many different types of schools and it's so unequal.

And I think that I've always remind myself how young all of this is and how short the distance is.

Even in the case of you and I, the distance from slavery and then when I put it in the broader context of 3,000 years, 5,000 years human beings, where people have fought and how they've acted towards each other in many different ways the concept of public education itself, how new that is as a concept.

And two things can be true.

Once again, it's like a paradox, it's things we are not good at.

People always trying to figure, are you with me or are you against me?

Say, man, I'm with you but I'm against you, but I'm with you.

So I think, yeah, sports and music is a good kinda thing.

If it's more popular forms of music that doesn't require a certain type of engagement, it's just kind of entertainment, you can have a good time, there's a degree of, and I'm not saying this in a negative way, I'm saying it in a way of, it's a degree of mindlessness and there's a degree of mindlessness just rooting for your team and getting and buying in some beverages and just, "I'm yellow and you blue."

And that's true, there's a tribalism to things and music is many times used to reinforce a tribal identity.

Sports is used to reinforce...

I'll never forget, I was on a elevator with Marcus Allen running back during one of the Super Bowl's.

And so people came on the elevator and looked at him and said, "Marcus Allen, you cost me a lot of money, man."

I mean, but so at first I thought it was a joke then it started...

The air started to get a little tight.

Oh, okay.

And he said, "You shouldn't have been on the games."

And he said, "Yeah, but..." But then the vibration, he got on a vibe like, "Hey man, we could get for real up in here."

- Yeah.

- Then it changed and when the people got off the elevator I asked him, "Man, does this happened to you a lot?"

And he said, "All the time, man.

"People take this stuff too seriously."

And now you have fantasy teams and people betting, and you have betting services attached to athletic leagues.

I'm not a fan of all that, I like to go with the program, but I'm not a fan of a lot of what goes on in music.

It's still music, but damn.

(audience laughs) Man, come on.

(audience applauds) I can't...

I wanna endorse it, I wanna feel good too.

I wanna be like, "Yeah, yeah, this feels..." But it don't feel good.

I don't feel that way ever feel like, "Okay, think about how much better this could feel "if we wasn't doing this."

We don't have to degrade people, we don't have to do all this.

We don't have to, we don't have to, we don't have to.

We have to have these systems that are only about money.

Everything cannot be business, it can't be.

There's a place for trade and there's a place for business.

(audience applauds) So that doesn't mean nothing can be business because when you get in that kind of opposite thing, it's always like, "Well man, what you saying?"

Come on man, come on big fellow, let's keep it verbal.

I'm not saying nothing.

It's so I feel like yeah, music and things can be effective to a certain degree.

And I want want you to notice that we are escalating, we are escalating a war that's leading toward a nuclear war.

Pay attention, I'm not gonna pick aside, pay attention to what's going on because we will be asleep and be like "Well, they're not gonna do this."

We don't know what they're gonna do.

We don't know and when we fall asleep, that's when it's like, "Damn, how did we... "How did these people sleep on this?"

- Yeah, yep.

- So the, the University of Michigan Arts Initiative hopes to further elevate the arts on campus and broaden their impact so all students have arts experiences.

One way to make that happen is integrating the arts into different disciplines.

And a great example of that is this Saturday where Wynton and you and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will take place at the 50 yard line for the halftime appearance.

What was the process of this and bringing it together, and can you tell us about any unexpected discoveries you have from this experience?

- I can't answer that one.

(Wynton laughs) - Well, I love UMS.

I really truly believe that if you could copy this for every college in the United States of America, our country would be better.

This is... (audience laughs) Students come, they participate, we go to outlying communities, they come in, Hill Auditorium, people come in.

The alumni, people been a part of it are there, they participate, local media.

People know that this is about a level of quality and great things have been brought here in all of the arts so I'm a tremendous fan of this program.

With the football halftime, where one of the guys in our band is named Chris Crenshaw.

He's from Georgia and he loves football.

He grew up like all of us playing in bands, he's a guy with perfect pitch and perfect time.

So he's like a...

If he tells you something it's wrong, it's wrong.

And he did the arrangements for us and he's worked with the staff and done a great job writing New Orleans style music and I really haven't had that much to do with it.

I'm just gonna play the part he tells me and he's gonna say, "Play right here, "don't play that, play there."

And for all of us but he said, and everybody said, it's been a fantastic experience and I know workin' with him, he's so easy to work with and we are looking forward to it, we've never done this so as a band, I know all of us are really looking forward to it.

- Yeah, did I hear this was one, some of your first times being in a marching band like this?

- I played in a marching band.

- Or leading the band or what are they?

- Well, I've never seen a jazz band like ours play with a marching band, where the actual music we're playing is integrated into the music the band is playing.

So the difference in this collaboration is gonna be, they actually worked on the arrangements to get it to where we actually are playing together in a certain way.

I received a set of instructions today about what the whistles mean and when the timing is at exactly 64 bars, and it's gonna be very precise.

- We'll see it that happens.

(everyone laughs) - Watch, it's gonna be better than that defense.

- You start to go down and you start to, you start to feel it and playing in front of all a hundred thousand people, we'll see how, if you stick with it.

(Warde laughing) (audience laughs) - You see that's real New Orleans right there.

Now y'all have a glimpse of what the real Crescent City is like.

- Exactly.

(all laughing) - Has there been any challenges to overcome in the process or anything unexpected?

- No, it's not, it's not...

I'm a grandfather age, no.

You know how old grandfather's a certain way?

"Yeah, that's okay."

Like how my daddy a certain age, "Yeah, that's fine, man.

(audience laughs) "Leave that boy alone."

Nothing is gonna happen, this is gonna be great.

We're gonna have a good time.

We go way out there man, never been anything like this.

We get a chance to play with the band.

We're gonna give each other love, we're gonna play.

We're gonna say, "Wow, that was fantastic."

Hopefully then we all gonna win the game.

We know the music gonna be good.

(everyone laughs) - As I talked about it earlier, that's the plan.

(everyone laughs) - Okay and on Friday night, we'll have the incredible opportunity to see a performance of Wynton, your original composition, "All Rise" at the Hill Auditorium.

"All Rise" as at 12 movement symphony built on the structure of the blues that moves from uplifting and energetic to dark and distressing through Wynton's vision of the togetherness and ascendance of humanity.

Drawing out joy...

Drawing joy out of tragedy and refusing to be beaten down.

Wynton, what can you tell us about the genesis of this piece, which premiered right before the millennium and the process of mounting it again here now through this extended residency that we're so glad to have you here for.

- Can't answer.

(audience laughs) I think it's gonna be awesome.

- Well, I was...

When I was 28 or 29, I was playing in Detroit and a maestro, Kurt Masur of the New York Philharmonic came, his son Tomás, was a trumpet player.

He stood in line and waited at the end, he talked to me and said, "Friend, I want you to write a piece "for the New York Philharmonic."

I started to laugh.

I said, "Man, I haven't even written a piece for a big band.

"I'm not gonna write anything "for the New York Philharmonic."

And this man, every time I saw him on the campus of Lincoln Center, he would say, "Are you still afraid "to write for the New York Philharmonic?

"Are you still afraid "to write for the New York Philharmonic?"

So it started to aggravate me.

I'm not afraid to write for New York Philharmonic, I didn't study composition and all this stuff.

"Are you afraid, friend, "to write for New York Philharmonic?"

So finally it took 10 years to just go slowly through learn how to write for a big band, learn how to write for the woodwind instruments, learn how to... Because I was working the entire time just taking on different pieces that would allow me, write a string quartet, write a piece to... How to write for these instruments.

I grew up playing a lot of different music so I was aware of the great pieces in orchestral tradition but to write for orchestra is very different from listening to it.

Then finally around 98 I said, "Okay, I think I could write for the Philharmonic."

And he said, I want you you to write a piece around the turn of the millennium so I went to his office for the meeting, "What do you want me to write about?"

He said, "You know, friend, I was a Nazi soldier."

Okay, now I wasn't ready to hear him say that.

(audience laughs) There's almost nobody ever says that.

(audience laughs) In my entire life, that's the single time I've been told that.

(audience laughs) So I was like, "Hmm, okay."

He said, "There's something you don't understand "about that time period."

He said, "There was a lot of cheering.

"There was a lot of cheering, friend."

And he of course was not a fan of the war by saying, "Why would you," but he begun to say, "It was either that or you weren't there."

It wasn't like you were choosing, that's what you did.

And he was a paratrooper that most of his group got wiped out.

It's was, I think 11 out of, I forget the exact number, 80 something.

And he was one of the...

He ended up going on to be famous Maestro of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, which is the tradition of Brahms and he championed kind of freedom in the east.

And at one point they wanted him to be the leader of East Germany, he was a voice for freedom and for the rights of people.

And he said, "What happened to George Gershwin "and Leonard Bernstein and the people who tried to bring "the kind of black, white American conundrum together?"

He said, "I noticed that doesn't exist anymore."

"Can you write a piece that will bring us together "and something that will allow us to use our forces "and your forces and give us something difficult to play.

"Don't write like (Wynton humming) strings, "make us play something."

So I was so shocked by just the whole kind of meeting.

So I thought about it, I said, "Yeah, I'll try to... "I'll try to do that."

And he said, "You can have the whole evening."

So that's like an hour and a half, man.

(Wynton chuckles) You have no idea what it's like to try to write for an hour and a half, if you haven't done that, you have to account for what everybody of 90 people does, every dot, every dash.

I mean it took me like a month just putting dots and dashes over music and sforzandos and accents.

Cause in jazz we we have an outline and we talk through stuff, with this you don't have to do no talking.

If something is not graphically represented, it's not.

So we did this piece and man, when we played it, it was the worst thing you ever heard in your life.

(audience laughs) And I mean to Philharmonic was trying to play it because a lot of them were friends of mine from, we went to camps together.

When I finished that night, it was like right before the turn of millennium.

I thought, "Man, we got this, all this hard music, "it's gonna be great."

It was absolutely terrible.

I just sat on the stage and just thought, "How could I have miscalculated this much of this "and write something this sad?"

And then we had a performance scheduled to play with the Czech Philharmonic 10 months later.

I was trying to cancel it, "Man, we gotta get out of this.

"We can't go over there and commit a crime and... "We can't go internationally commit crimes like this, "that one criminal lack was enough."

(audience laughs) Cause you have no idea, I'm sitting up there playing it too.

So I feel like the whole people, everybody's looking at me like, "Man, how could you subject us to this "for an hour and a half?

"Are you that egocentric?"

(Warde laughing) And then when when we played it in the Czech Republic, man, it was much better.

And the music is strange how we can just, over time the play stuff, it gets better.

And over the years, we played it, we don't play it a lot, but we've played it in different places.

Went on tour playing it to our friends, it's always to big effect.

The people always like it and orchestras like it because they're parts, they have difficult parts to play.

And that's the message of it is written in the words of it.

And it's a universal humanism but it's complex and it took a lot of time and I still get tired sometimes just looking at it and say, "Okay, thank the good Lord."

I mean, when I finished writing it my ears were actually hot, I couldn't touch 'em, I'm not exaggerating.

I was hearing so much like when I wake up in the morning, cause you hear, music comes to you.

I couldn't do this to my ears, they were burning up.

And I had copies laying all around in my house just sleeping saying, "Man, y'all, you wore us out."

(audience laughs) - One of the... You talk about your experiences there, you got me to listen to classic music with your "Classic Wynton" album and it got me through grad school.

Literally, that was the music I studied by, that I read by and it immersed me.

I mean, you know in New Orleans there ain't a lot of classic music, right?

There's a lot of unclassic music but there's not a lot of classic music.

And so I just wanna thank you for that, man, because I still listen to that album and still just with all that it meant to me at the time but it was really... And probably the only, I mean I've since listened to it, but it is not this is really, when people say, "Do you listen to classic music?"

I say, "Yeah, I listen to Wynton Marsalis "play classic music."

But that's the only genre that really I never got into.

You know, in New Orleans you don't... You hear everything but classic so thank you.

- Man, I appreciate that.

And I wanna tell you, you got a lot to get into.

Cause when you get into it, you gonna be like, "Damn is that what that is?"

- Yeah.

- That Beethoven, Shestakova did this?

Or- - Yeah, - There's some people in there that when you find them, you gonna say, "Okay, that's a good, good hobby."

When you get down there you say, "Okay, I'm gonna learn how to hear these people's music "because they dealt with somethin'."

- Well, I'd really like to thank you both.

I would stay here all night but we're out of time and Wynton has to get to a rehearsal, so can we give them a round of applause?

(audience applauding) - [Warde] Thank you.

(audience applauding) - There's a lot of opportunities to check out Wynton while he's here, so please do that and thank you so much for being here.

(audience applauding)