After the super-hyped apprenticeship with Blakey, Marsalis ventured out on his own. His career went into hyperdrive. Grammy Awards for best-selling jazz and classical albums. Critical admiration in every field he conquered commercially. Compelling excavations into the roots and prime repertoire of jazz. Controversial, uncompromising interviews.

We hadn't seen ­ or heard ­ anything yet. Marsalis spearheaded jazz programming at Lincoln Center and established the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. He created groundbreaking pieces in long-form for septet, and for orchestra; and his crossover oratorio, Blood on the Fields, earned him the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to a jazz composer. Then he made his landmark appearance earlier this year in Ken Burns's monumental Jazz documentary, sparking new interest in jazz ­ and a boom in album sales.

Yesterday is gone. On October 18, Wynton Marsalis turned 40. But with all his achievements and accolades, his zest for bringing jazz to the people, hipping new generations to the music, is as strong as ever.

Creative Loafing: You're going to be in Charlotte with your septet in about a week. Are you featuring new personnel or new compositions?

Wynton Marsalis: We have a new composition for the ballet we've been working on with Alvin Ailey. We'll be playing some of that, and we're playing just a lot of our regular septet music. It's a wide range of music, as always ­ a lot of my original compositions. We have Richard Johnson on the piano, and Harvey Jackson on the drums, and Ronald Westray on the trombone. So that's new, different personnel.

To me, the septet sound sums up a lot of your outlook and your talent, because you've restored the balance between brass and reeds, and you've kind of created a mini-orchestra with three sections.

Oh man, thank you. That's what we're trying to do with the septet ­ just bring things about the music to the forefront. Make the music be more of itself. In the New Orleans music, getting a call-and-response between the brass and the reeds, and also in some places to take the long solos and have the freedom for the drums to interact, which you don't necessarily have with a big band.

You've also resurrected the good righteous dirty sound of the slide trombone, which has been missing from jazz for a couple of decades.

Yeah. Oooo, I love that.

And you also ask your reed players to pack a clarinet so you can do that New Orleans sound.

Yes, sir. I was lucky to have people who didn't mind playing it.

Tell me about the new facility you're building for the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

We're building the Frederick P. Rose Hall in Columbus Circle in the AOL Time-Warner Building. [Four] thousand square feet. It's three halls, three rehearsal rooms, a studio, a master control, technical operations center, and like a jazz cafe, a medium size type of Greek community theater with public dance capabilities. And in the back, kind of a small Italian opera house.

I've read that you want this acoustically to be specifically for jazz. What does that entail?

The tail of the echo is not so long that it makes the bass and the cymbals sound muddy.

Ah...

It has a golden ring in the sound.

Is that what you'd normally hear more of in a studio?

You hear it mainly in a club because a club is generally low ceilings and carpet, so that makes not too much echo. The studios of today, there's no echo, but there's also no quality of the sound a lot of times. Because many of the studios work only with electronic instruments. So they don't really need any of the acoustic instrument sound.

Are you feeling some of the crisis that's being reported in the classical music industry ­ the collapse of quality recording into commercialism?

Aw, definitely.

What do feel the answer is?

You've got to keep playing and deal with education.

Well, in classical music, there's plenty of that, isn't there?

You know, it's not a matter of a certain type of music. It's just the whole direction our entire culture is going in. A lot of times the music is not worth playing ­ because you want that extreme popularity. You have to try to make the statement you can make and try to bring more people over to the statement but realize that the statement is what brings the people. It's not the publicity. The statement. Because when you have a statement that's provocative enough, people want to write about it, and they want to hear it. And when we start to develop the feeling that "people don't know" or they "can't understand" the music and all of that, that hurts what you're trying to do.

There's probably a lot of feeling among classical music lovers that they need someone like what you've been for jazz in the last couple of decades.

It's hard to get a consensus because a lot of the modern music is hard for people to listen to. And jazz is the same way. You've got to give the people something, you know? You have to accept that you have to work with them in some kind of way.

Right.

I mean I would like to play a concert and play a trumpet solo for 30 minutes. But I wouldn't want to pay to hear somebody do that. And you know, it's kind of like the progression that Trane made with his music where he went from having an audience to not having one. . .the musicians need to understand that we're playing for people. I'm not saying we've got to degenerate into just light shows and people half naked and all of that. We have certain things that make our music provocative. You have to heighten those elements and present that to the people. . .We have a body of music that people have enjoyed for years... you can go through a list of things that you have that could be provocative and attractive to people, and if you don't want to do any of that, well... you're going to have trouble keeping an audience, you know?

So there needs to be as much thought about connecting with the audience as experimenting with the music?

Well, a lot of what passes as experimentation with music is not experimentation, really. Some of it is. But everything has to be considered. Like if I invite you to my house to eat a meal, I've got to consider something that you can eat. It's got to be on my mind. I can't be acting like you should be grateful to be here.

Exactly.

I'm just not from that school. I play for people. If I don't want to play for people, I don't have to be out on the road playing. I could stay home. I'm not coming to do a favor for the people there. I want them to enjoy it. Just the fact that it's possible for them not to enjoy it makes me nervous about playing for them, and it's on my mind when I'm in front of them, playing.

When you think of what you've done by age 40, you really have to think about people like Mozart and Schubert.

I don't know about all that. I'm just trying to keep learning and playing.

Is there something that you feel like you're learning right now?

Oh, yeah, always. Man, I figured out today at this photo shoot how to play an alternate fingering on a high B flat on the trumpet. I'd never realized it. And I'm always talking with musicians. Like yesterday, I did a gig with Paquito D'Rivera, and he was showing me this particular groove and the orchestration of a beat in Latin music. It's Teeng-teeng-tee-keeng-ka-teeng-ka-teeng-teeng-ka-teeng, teeng, teeng, teeng. . . He showed me how to break up the beat a certain way, you know? So there's always something to learn.

And everything you learn is kind of filed away to be used?

Ah, yeah. I try to use it all.

You're a thief aren't you?

Yes, sir. You've got to be.

Have you missed out by rising so quickly? I saw you last time you were here, kind of relaxing with your Orchestra, and looking for all the world like a Junior Art Blakey, proud of all the kids he's nurtured. Do you feel like you're communing enough with the old people now?

Man, I'm always around all kinds of people. We just did a concert with the Heath Brothers. And there's no old people in jazz. OK, we did a concert with Jimmy Heath and Percy Heath and Tootie Heath. After the show, Saturday night ­ we did two nights, 75th birthday for Jimmy...

He's still a monster player.

Right, and Percy is 78 years old. We went uptown to a place called the Sugar Hill Bistro in Harlem. I look up at Percy Heath, man, three o'clock in the morning, he's playing bass with some young kids from the New School who are 19 and 20. And he's swinging like it's the first time he ever touched the bass! And that's the beauty of our music. You see, it's not separated by age.