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A jazz musician is not a jazz musician when he or she is eating dinner or when he or she is with his parents or spouse or neighbors. He's above all a human being . . . the true artform is being a human being.
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I keep recycling and repackaging music that I've done in the past, as though I can't write anymore. Like, okay, I'm done with that. But I need to kind of prod myself again into come on, Herbie, get off your duff and start writing some new music.
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If you're not judging what happens, then you're trusting what others are doing, what you're playing, and trusting what you're playing.And it can lead you to other ideas, to something maybe you hadn't expressed before.
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The thing that we possess, that machines don't, is the ability to exhibit wisdom.
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A great teacher is one who realizes that he himself is also a student and whose goal is not dictate the answers, but to stimulate his students' creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves.
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I've been practising Buddhism for forty years, and that's what has led me to this path of discovering my own humanity and recognizing the humanity in others.
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But, the truth is that everyone is somebody already.
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Fact is that I played piano and performed, as a young kid, a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra . Don't forget I was only eleven-years-old and to be on the stage at that age had tremendous impact on me. Basically love for classical music and performing as a kid on the big stage probably led toward this decision, which meant that music is going to be my big love but also my profession.
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I got a chance to work with Miles Davis, and that changed everything for me, 'cause Miles really encouraged all his musicians to reach beyond what they know, go into unknown territory and explore. It's made a difference to me and the decisions that I've made over the years about how to approach a project in this music.
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The music becomes something that is its own entity.
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Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission that goes far beyond just making music for the sake of music.
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We need to move into a culture of peace. What I hope to promote is the idea that we all need each other and that the greatest happiness in life is not how much we have but how much we give. That's a wealth that's priceless. You can't buy compassion.
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One of the greatest attributes of jazz, I think, is that it is that open.