Jazz Quotes
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Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz.
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The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel.
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All the jazz guys had interracial relationships, and even the ladies did. Over the years, interracial relationships have been a hip, almost defiant thing, a way of saying "Nobody can put a boundary around me."
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I didn't plan on rock-n-roll. I wanted to learn jazz; I got to know some people doing rock-n-roll with jazz, and I thought I could make some money playing music.
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Duke Ellington's career traces the entire history of jazz. The repertoire associated with him contains the most important elements in the music and provides concrete examples of some of the best ways to present the music in the widest variety of settings-radio, TV, recordings, movies, concert halls, festivals, solo, small ensemble, big band, symphony orchestra, opera, Broadway shows.... You name it, he did it!
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Whenever I open a book about jazz, I turn to the index and look for Lennie Tristano, the incredible pianist; Lee Konitz, the luminous alto sax player; and Warne Marsh, the tenor player who captured some of the most beautiful sounds in the world.
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Jazz was born out of the whiskey bottle, was raised on marijana, and will expire on cocaine.
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The thing that is making jazz healthy today is that people are coming out of other backgrounds - from rock, folk, from ethnic music. It's changing the music, and for the better.
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Jazz is really about the human experience. It’s about the ability of human beings to take the worst of circumstances and struggles and turn it into something creative and constructive. That’s something that’s built into the fiber of every human being. And I think that’s why people can respond to it. They feel the freedom in it. And the attributes of jazz are also admirable. It’s about dialogue. It’s about sharing. And teamwork. It’s in the moment, and it's nonjudgmental.
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Some people think I'm a rock 'n' roll musician and some think I'm a jazz musician but, for me, there is no difference.
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Jazz has the ability to absorb & transform influences from diverse musical styles.
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Many of the jazz musicians whom are no longer here. You don't realize that it's history when it is happening and then time passes and you look at a picture and you say "Wow, there is history attached to that."
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I'm really not this jazz traditionalist guy you've been making me out to be all of these years.
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They put on fresh gloves and got back to business. Jazz wiped up the blood splatters in the freezer and tossed the tissues in with Howie’s waste. It bothered him that he was leaving evidence behind without some sort of oxygenated bleach, those blood splatters would still show up under Luminol. Of course, the odds of anyone deciding to spray down the morgue freezer and switch on an ultraviolet light were pretty minimal, so it’s not like it was evidence that anyone would ever find or use. Still: Billy Dent’s First Commandment was “Thou shalt not leave evidence.
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I think when you look back at the different eras in jazz, what leads from one to another is never a melodic revolution, but a rhythmic revolution.
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I'm always looking for ways to develop as a Jazz artist, to find different ways of using my voice.
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The history of all big jazz bands shows was, first they played for dancing, and then they played for singing.
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I always say that the problem with jazz accessibility is not the content of the music, it's people's ability to access it.
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I don't think that jazz, as any kind of an art form, has any permanence attached to it, apart from the practitioners of it.
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I'm always looking to create new avenues or new visions of music.
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I listen to instrumental jazz and bluegrass, but aside from my AM workout, I have no rituals.
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Amsterdam must have more than a million people. But the only area where jazz is really profitable and successful in an economic sense is in Japan. That's because they haven't been exposed enough.
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I think jazz and comic books are probably the two uniquely American art forms.
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Like, I'm trying to make a statement that clean comedy is somehow better or loftier than dirty comedy, and I don't feel that way at all. I just think it's different. It's different. There's rock music, there's jazz music, there's reggae music: All of those forms are different.
