NOW, A JAZZ MOMENT...

MUSIC: Sweet Georgia Brown

Ellis Marsalis:  If you really want to be excellent at whatever it is that you doin', especially in music, you try to teach that to somebody.  And you will find out real quickly how much you know, how much you don't know, what you need to go and find out.  By attempting to TEACH somebody. 

NEA JAZZ MASTER ELLIS MARSALIS IS ONE OF OUR MOST RESPECTED JAZZ EDUCATORS, DUE IN PART TO THE SUCCESS OF HIS STUDENTS -- TRUMPETER TERENCE BLANCHARD, SAXOPHONIST DONALD HARRISON, TRUMPETER NICHOLAS PAYTON, PIANIST AND VOCALIST HARRY CONNICK, JR... AND, OF COURSE, HIS SONS BRANFORD, WYNTON, DELFEAYO AND JASON.  AT THE CORE OF ELLIS'S METHOD IS TEACHING PEOPLE HOW TO LISTEN...

Ellis Marsalis:  I would have ways of determining who was hearing and who wasn't.  'Cause you put a recording on and ask the students,  "Did you hear that?" "Yeah."  They all gonna say they heard it.  [laughs]  See.  So, I would put a recording on, then I had a lot of questions:  "What was the instrumentation?  Who had the first solo?  How many choruses was the first solo?  What about the second solo?  What about the third solo?" And we'd be talkin' about a quintet and sometimes they didn't have no third solo.  So I threw that in anyway [laughs], just to let them know that, Hey man, you know, I've been around this block a few times.  So you can't run this scam on me.

MUSIC: up for punctuation, then fades under and out

THIS JAZZ MOMENT WITH PIANIST ELLIS MARSALIS WAS CREATED BY THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS.  I'M CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE.