We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Marques Carroll a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Marques, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I’ve been a musician for 38 years now and 25 of those years has been as a professional. I started playing trumpet at the age of 8 and by my mid teens I knew I wanted to play trumpet, make music and tour the world while connecting with people. This journey was set and my path to doing this would be moving from St. Louis to Chicago to attend school at DePaul University and then building my career over the next 10 years after graduating in 2001. Little did I know, I would also fall in love with teaching and building programs for students who did not have access to the arts the way I did growing up. Trying to find balance as an artist and an educator has been a big challenge and at times it seemed impossible. During the pandemic I took the biggest risk in my career and I left music education from the school I taught at and I spent my resources on myself, building a Record Label, writing and recording my first two solo albums, connecting with people to work on licensing my music and booking my working quintet throughout Chicago and beyond. This risk required me to not only save up for this move but have the goals, planning and action steps necessary to achieve what I had envisioned. I was not happy with myself during this time of my life, I was also seeing our country implode and the only way I could deal with it was create my music to cope and hopefully inspire people around me. This risk of betting on myself paid off in so many ways. I could finally be at peace with myself inwardly about finally writing, recording, producing and sharing my music with the world. I was able to place two songs on the TV show “The Bear” (episodes 4 &8), I collaborated on a documentary that took home an Emmy, my first album received a nomination for a Grammy consideration, I collaborated on several other pieces of meaningful works and overall I was at peace with doing the things I set out to do. Taking a chance on myself, was hard for me financially, emotionally and somewhat physically, but I’m happy I did just that.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started playing trumpet early on and began playing throughout Chicago. This was way before the social media platforms played a big part in our industry and everyone else’s for that matter.

As a player I have spent the last 28 years living in Chicago becoming one of the top call trumpet players in the city. I have played every major Jazz club and Jazz festival the city has to offer. I have backed up artist such as the Temptations, Mary Wilson, The Four Tops, The O’Jays, Aretha Franklin, and more. I played shows downtown in the theatre district and played on countless records for local and international artists alike. While doing this I also built an after school program for Chicago Jesuit Academy (Austin neighborhood of Chicago). It’s a private school, free tuition-based school for minority students. I have been there for 18 years now and continue to serve those students. From that I also began doing masterclasses, clinics, and guest artist appearances throughout Illinois, Iowa, St. Louis, Wisconsin, Indiana, South Dakota, New York, Baltimore, Europe (select countries). All of this happened while also touring with the Count Basie Orchestra for 2 years.

The biggest thing I provide these days to my clients is a number of things.

1. My students, school, guest artist appearances, masterclasses/clinics my audience(s) always gets an authentic experience in music collaboration, Jazz history as it pertains to the foundation and its relevancy to today’s times, musical theory and how to interpret music on a high level and an overall experience that leaves my audience(s) feeling uplifted and positive.

2. My concert audience(s) always leave feeling connected to the music, myself and my band and each other. People are always happy to share how moved they were from their experience with me and my music and that feels really good (all the time).

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

For me right now my students are my driving force as a creative. My young students I see during the school year, the ones that get private lessons with me, the ones I meet at Jazz camps and workshops or those who follow me on my social media. I feel I have a duty to continue to present the most authentic music and experience that combats some of the things they are exposed to that are not as authentic in nature. Social media has young people and society a bit fooled into thinking things come fast, easy and you don’t have to work for it. I’ll be the first to tell my students this is what it looks like to fail. This is what it looks like to succeed. I create music, musical experiences and platforms to share with the world because it my way of being in service to society. It’s something all of of us should be doing on a daily basis.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

As it pertains to social media I tell my students all the time, it is YOUR BRAND. It is an extension of who you are. Besides still needing a website, your social media platforms are way to share your art, your ideas, what you stand for, who you follow, all of it. You have to be clear about what you are representing, how often you post (story, reel etc).

I personally got to busy at one point, so I hired an admin to do this work for me. He was a former student who had arts management experience and he was able to help me design game plans and ways to attract more audience members, sell merchandise related to my projects and how to get people from other industries to notice what I am doing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.marquescarrollmusic.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marquescarrollmusic/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marques.carroll.5
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marquescarroll/?locale=en_US
• Twitter: N/A
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2l88XqO3pgt4yZUSYDcdbg
• Yelp: N/A
• Soundcloud: N/A

Image Credits

Alex Callejo (photographer), Jamie Breiwick (Graphic Design), Mark Scott Carroll (Graphic Design), Gary Hudson (Graphic Design)