Jazz Quotes
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Jazz vision is a wordless conversation between musical notes and visual expressions.
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People who love jazz musicians love us when we play what we want to play and we're starving. But as soon as you commercialize your sound like Wes Montgomery did, the jazz fans and the critics are down on you!
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I was a kid living in New Jersey, who – I'd wanted to make movies since I was a little kid, so that came before music for me. But I started playing drums just as a hobby, and I wasn't even really into jazz that much.
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I don't know why people call me a jazz singer, though I guess people associate me with jazz because I was raised in it, from way back. I'm not putting jazz down, but I'm not a jazz singer...I've recorded all kinds of music, but (to them) I'm either a jazz singer or a blues singer. I can't sing a blues – just a right-out blues – but I can put the blues in whatever I sing. I might sing 'Send In the Clowns' and I might stick a little bluesy part in it, or any song. What I want to do, music-wise, is all kinds of music that I like, and I like all kinds of music.
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Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking. . . . the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things - all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.
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As my career has progressed, I've had the pleasure of playing with the baddest jazz cats on the planet. But that doesn't change my desire to entertain folks. That's really who I am.
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The beauty of jazz is that it's malleable. People are addressing it to suit their own personalities.
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I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist.
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I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
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I listened to Billie Holiday a lot in order to learn to sing. She remains one of the extraordinary jazz singers. But my intent is to become my own voice, to be able to interpret these songs in my own way.
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I think I represent a more left-wing view of what jazz is.
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Since my father is a musician as well, he taught me growing up that if you can play jazz, you can learn all instruments and write on them. He wanted me to be a songwriter that can do anything in any genre. I'm all about doing every genre.
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Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life.
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I'm not a big jazz fan.
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I think jazz is actually quite unforgiving in its disdain for nostalgia. It demands creativity and change at its highest level.
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I'm a great believer that actors are very similar to session musicians. You wouldn't ask a session musician, 'How do you play jazz,' and then, 'How do you play classical?' They just do it, because if they don't do it, they don't eat.
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Diplomacy is like jazz: endless variations on a theme.
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The reason New Orleans is still around is because of the celebrations it has inspired since its inception as a city. I'm always excited about the possibility of what might happen. That's what drives us, and I think that's the spirit of New Orleans and the spirit of jazz.
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Jazz shouldn't have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that's required to sound like jazz. For me, the word 'jazz' means, 'I dare you.'
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Live action writers will give you a structure, but who the hell is talking about structure? Animation is closer to jazz than some kind of classical stage structure.
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I listen to everything from jazz to reggae to heavy metal and I kind of combine everything to make something different
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I understood jazz, I understood how it worked. That's what I apply to everything.
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Jazz really does try to include everything. It's always been popular music. But the wonderful thing about jazz is its willingness to take chances.
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I think jazz is good, but I don't enjoy it. It's not for me.
