I remember the first time I interviewed Wynton Marsalis some 10 years ago. I came away from that discussion with a sense that the young trumpeter, then only 25-years-old, felt he was carrying the weight of the jazz world on his shoulders, he expressed such an overwhelming sense of responsibility to jazz. His involvement in the music went far beyond a career and the love of playing, it was a mission.

That mission has not diminished but grown gigantically with the rise of his fame and the op...