Jazz Quotes
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Jazz was uplifted by what I did.
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The whole reason for Jazz at the Philharmonic was to take it to places where I could break down segregation.
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I recorded my first jazz record in the '70s.
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At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music.
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I'm concerned with trend. I don't know where jazz fans will come from 20 years from now.
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It's very modern. Very gamine. You look like a jazz singer.
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I like to say, jazz music is kind of like my musical equivalent of comfort food. You know, it's always where I go back to when I just want to feel sort of grounded.
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Before I became a writer, I was running a jazz bar in the center of Tokyo, which means that I worked in filthy air all the time late into the night. I was very excited when I started making a living out of my writing, and I decided, 'I will live in nothing but an absolutely healthy way.'
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Jazz is a music that is open enough to borrow from any other form of music, and has the strength to influence any other form of music.
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I was interested in Armstrong to begin with because he is the most important figure in Jazz in the 20th Century. There's simply no question about it. I mean, if you're going to compare him to somebody, it's Shakespeare in terms of centrality of the tradition, in being at the beginning of it.
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Jazz is a way of life, and you have to learn about it on the street, so to speak. But the training comes in by giving you the tools to work with.
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You have to go out and learn jazz by playing.
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I love my jazz hands!
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It's not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.
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I don't mind being classified as a jazz artist, but I do mind being restricted to being a jazz artist. My foundation has been in jazz, though I didn't really start out that way. I started in classical music, but my formative years were in jazz, and it makes a great foundation.
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It's much easier for me to say that, the kind of music I didn't listen to was pretty much that. I mean everything, from jazz to classical to popular. And Tibetan horns were a great part of it in 1966, '67.
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What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.
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The greatest contribution jazz has made in music has been to replace the role of the conductor with a member of the ensemble who, instead of waving his arms to keep time and convey mood, is an active member of the musical statement. That person is the drummer.
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Yes, there's a relaying of internal states that only a novel can achieve. In my view, the novel is one of Europe's greatest gifts to the world. America and Africa collaborated to give the world jazz. We'll call it even.
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I started off with classical music, and I got into jazz when I was about 14 years old. And I've been playing jazz ever since.
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I'm aware that a lot of what is happening in jazz has not had a very dynamic change in a long time.
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The brain is only three pounds of blood, dream, and electricity, and yet from that mortal stew come Beethoven's sonatas. Dizzie Gillespie's jazz. Audrey Hepburn's wish to spend the last month of her life in Somalia, saving children.
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Oscar Peterson is the greatest living influence on jazz pianists today.
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It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself.
