New Orleans is a place where people are deliberately undereducated so that they can be a labour class – the economy there is tourism, and one of the only outlets that black males have traditionally been allowed is to play jazz music, y’know? Christian Scott Read Quote
You can’t grow if you’re going to say: ‘The contributions of my predecessors are greater than anything I can ever achieve.’ Each generation has to have a chance to find itself. Christian Scott Read Quote
I wouldn’t argue that anyone living can play the trumpet better than Wynton Marsalis. Christian Scott Read Quote
We didn’t have much, but I was raised to believe if you had books, you had a lot. My grandfather and my parents made me and my twin brother Kiel read at least a book a week. Christian Scott Read Quote
If anyone ever tells me something doesn’t go together, it makes me want to try it. Christian Scott Read Quote
The one thing that I’ve learned is that people don’t change. Each new generation has the same stuff that the last one did. It’s one of those things where jazz kind of works in five-year cycles. Christian Scott Read Quote
Depending on what you allow, you can still get the blues, man. I’m still trying to figure out where the blues really lies, where the street is. Christian Scott Read Quote
I don’t just play the trumpet because it’s something that resonates with me: I play the trumpet because I realize it’s a means to help free a lot of people that ain’t free. Christian Scott Read Quote
The music that I make, the younger musicians are referring to it as ‘stretch’ music. Christian Scott Read Quote
My main horn is a hybrid of a flugelhorn a coronet and a trumpet, but that’s really because, for me, each instrument to me had a different voice, and I liked them all, but I didn’t like any one of them singularly. Christian Scott Read Quote
