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Jazz music, one of the foundations of it is blues.
And the blues is not closed-eyed optimism, it's open-eyed optimism.
But the one thing the blues is not, it's not whining.
From the BBC World Service, this is the documentary in the studio.
I'm Leo Hornak, and I'm in the studio with one of the great American musicians of the last 40 years.
The jazz trumpeter, bandleader and composer, Wynton Marsalis.
The blues encourages you to always face the difficulties and bring yourself to it in your will and you have to not be redirected philosophically and you have to have strength.
These are challenging times but times are always challenging and the question is always what do you bring to those times.
Since the 80s He's been known as one of the finest trumpeters in jazz history and equally successful in European classical music.
He's won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize and many Grammy Awards.
There are even statues of him in France and in Spain.
But when you've been at the top for years, when the statues have been built and the awards won,
when whole generations of younger players look up to you, how do you stay motivated?
How do you keep your direction as a creative artist?
This year,
I was granted unusual behind-the-scenes access to Wynton and the band he's most famous for leading,
the Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra,
as they rehearse ahead of their 2025 European tour,
including the London premiere of a piece Wynton calls the Democracy Suite,