I'm Alan Alder and this is Clear In Vivid, conversations about connecting and communicating.

If we dedicate to seeing change in our country through using jazz music to teach us who we

are as a nation, music nurtures the realm of the invisible.

All of your internal life is nurtured by music, witness music of quality, Beethoven's

mother's family, Shasta Kovic, Duke Ellington, and listening to that is nurtured as like you

put into most nutritious nutrients on a plant.

And that's what we need in our nation, you know.

That's Wyndon Marthsalis, a man who's believed in the power of music, is expressed not only

through his virtuoso trumpet performances, both jazz and classical, but also in his work

as director of jazz at Lincoln Center.

His most recent work is an album that melds in exhilarating jazz score with biting social

criticism.

It's called the Ever Funky Lowdown.

This is such a treat to be talking to you today, I can't tell you.

I admire you so.

And we, you know, we had different beginnings, but similar in some ways.

Your dad was a musician and you grew up in places where jazz was being played and your

boyhood friends were musicians, my boyhood friends were burlesque comics because my father

was in burlesque at the time.

So you're always the kid around all the older people?

That's right, that's right.

And I thought that the world was being on the stage and entertaining people.

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