Wynton Marsalis

The 15-year-old singer couldn’t believe she’d been chosen to sing for the Olympics

I’ve been listening to Wynton Marsalis’s music for almost as long as I’ve been listening seriously to music. Less so today than I used to — my ears got bigger, I hear more music than I did as a kid — but still. As a teenager I spent hours figuring out the structure of “Hesitation” and “Knozz-Moe-King” off his first two albums. Used to play the little five-note tag from “Hesitation” at the end of everything. It drove Scott, our trombone player, properly crazy. But I haven’t had many conversations with Wynton Marsalis. The one time I did get him on the phone for a couple of hours, probably 15 years ago now, two things were obvious: he just loves to talk about music, and journalists don’t give him a lot of chance to.