QUOTABLE

“If artists have to be concerned about the whims of the people, Beethoven would’ve written music like Mozart. Stravinsky would have made sure they didn’t tear down the theater in 1918 when he brought on ‘The Rite of Spring.’ There would’ve been no Shakespeare. No Charlie Parker. No Coltrane to play ‘anti-jazz,’ as the critics called it back then. That’s what separates artists from the people. We’re of the people. But what we do isn’t necessarily for them. It sounds harsh, but there it is.”--Saxophonist Branford Marsalis, in Newsday