Uploaded August 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Wynton Marsalis Harvard Lecture #4: At the Speed of Instinct
Choosing Together to Play and Stay Together
Delivered April 17, 2013
Wynton Marsalis discusses and demonstrate the techniques, concepts, methods, opportunities and objectives that encourage spontaneous, intelligent and cohesive group decision-making in jazz music. Also illuminates how each member of the quintet asserts, accompanies and adjusts to balance the freedom of improvisation with the sacrificial demands of finding and maintaining our common rhythm, known as swing.
Personnel:
Wynton Marsalis - trumpet
Walter Blanding - tenor sax
Ali Jackson - drums
Carlos Henriquez - bass
Marcus Roberts - piano
00:00 Intro
2:09 Jazz As Mastery of Time
9:46 Quality of Time vs. The Fact of Time
12:29 Swing As Our Unifying Objective
15:47 Struggling with the Demon of Time
20:00 The Time Space Continuum
24:25 The Velocity of Human Interaction
28:05 The Immediacy of Sound
36:19 From the Creator to the Artist Directly to You
39:45 The Price of Insight
45:11 Fun and the Hard Facts of Life
47:54 Truth Deeper Than Words
56:08 The Myth and Meaning of Jazz
59:41 Meaning Is the Substance of Identity
1:05:49 Be Whatever You Want to Be (Except Yourself)
1:12:29 Modern Jazz and the Stubborn Fakelore of Race
1:23:42 "What Is" Matters
1:33:16 Basics of Survival
1:36:41 Seven Principles of American Democracy That Are Fundamental to Jazz
1:39:54 Collective Consciousness in Real Time
1:53:22 Blues
2:07:35 Afro/Cuban Hispanic
2:19:58 Ballad
2:28:50 The Moral Imperatives of Jazz
2:31:41 Collective Memory to Be the Best You
Wynton Marsalis Harvard Lecture #4: At the Speed of Instinct
Choosing Together to Play and Stay Together
Delivered April 17, 2013
Wynton Marsalis discusses and demonstrate the techniques, concepts, methods, opportunities and objectives that encourage spontaneous, intelligent and cohesive group decision-making in jazz music. Also illuminates how each member of the quintet asserts, accompanies and adjusts to balance the freedom of improvisation with the sacrificial demands of finding and maintaining our common rhythm, known as swing.
Personnel:
Wynton Marsalis - trumpet
Walter Blanding - tenor sax
Ali Jackson - drums
Carlos Henriquez - bass
Marcus Roberts - piano
00:00 Intro
2:09 Jazz As Mastery of Time
9:46 Quality of Time vs. The Fact of Time
12:29 Swing As Our Unifying Objective
15:47 Struggling with the Demon of Time
20:00 The Time Space Continuum
24:25 The Velocity of Human Interaction
28:05 The Immediacy of Sound
36:19 From the Creator to the Artist Directly to You
39:45 The Price of Insight
45:11 Fun and the Hard Facts of Life
47:54 Truth Deeper Than Words
56:08 The Myth and Meaning of Jazz
59:41 Meaning Is the Substance of Identity
1:05:49 Be Whatever You Want to Be (Except Yourself)
1:12:29 Modern Jazz and the Stubborn Fakelore of Race
1:23:42 "What Is" Matters
1:33:16 Basics of Survival
1:36:41 Seven Principles of American Democracy That Are Fundamental to Jazz
1:39:54 Collective Consciousness in Real Time
1:53:22 Blues
2:07:35 Afro/Cuban Hispanic
2:19:58 Ballad
2:28:50 The Moral Imperatives of Jazz
2:31:41 Collective Memory to Be the Best You
