Jazz Quotes
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I have always loved jazz music and as a teen growing up in New York City and then later on as an adult have great memories of the jazz clubs that were all located on 52nd Street. I still catch as many jazz shows as I can when I am in New York. And when I perform, I have my jazz quartet by my side. Jazz musicians keep things spontaneous and very "live," which is the way I like to perform.
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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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The beauty of jazz is that it's malleable. People are addressing it to suit their own personalities.
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I listened to the radio, so I was influenced by everyone from Michael Jackson to Milli Vanilli. But thankfully my dad had a collection of Cat Stevens albums while my mom was listening to jazz.
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Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that.
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I think I represent a more left-wing view of what jazz is.
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I made a good living for a teenager. And I had to learn all different kinds of music - jazz, swing, Motown, pop - and that inspired what kind of music I started to write.
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I'm not a big jazz fan.
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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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Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life.
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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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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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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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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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I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist.
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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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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.
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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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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'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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I will never again play anything that does not have social significance. We American jazz musicians of African descent have proved beyond all doubt that we are master musicians of our instruments. Now what we have to do is employ our skill to tell the dramatic story of our people and what we've been through.
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I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.
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Diplomacy is like jazz: endless variations on a theme.
