{"id":1593,"date":"2014-03-12T17:22:20","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T17:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjazzscene.com\/?page_id=1593"},"modified":"2023-12-21T21:15:55","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T21:15:55","slug":"great-quotes","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/worldjazzscene.com\/wordpress\/great-quotes\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Quotes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
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Here are some great quotes for and about jazz musicians.<\/h3>\n

Ahmad Jamal<\/strong> \u2013 \u201cYou don\u2019t create things, you discover things.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Robertson Davies<\/strong> – Music is like wine, the less you know about it the sweeter you like it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill Dobbins<\/strong> .. we seldom suffer from taking our subject of study too seriously, but we usually suffer when we take ourselves too seriously.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bradford Marsalis<\/strong> – “My first task is to help students reject 18 years of poor learning that teaches them that knowledge is a product rather than a process.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Benny Green<\/strong> – \u201cA jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Hank Jones<\/strong> – When you listen to a pianist, each notes should have an identity, each note should have a soul of its own.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill Evans<\/strong> – \u201cTo the person who uses music as a medium for the expression of ideas, feelings, images, or what have you; anything which facilitates this expression is properly his instrument.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps it is a peculiarity of mine that despite the fact that I am a professional performer, it is true that I have always preferred playing without an audience.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFirst of all, I never strive for identity. That\u2019s something that just has happened automatically as a result, I think, of just putting things together, tearing things apart and putting it together my own way, and somehow I guess the individual comes through eventually.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy creed for art in general is that it should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise . . . a part of yourself you never knew existed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI believe in things that are developed through hard work. I always like people who have developed long and hard, especially through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think what they arrive at is usually a much deeper and more beautiful thing than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning. I say this because it\u2019s a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA guy is influenced by hundreds of people and things, and all show up in his work. To fasten on any one or two is ridiculous. I will say one thing, though. Lennie Tristano\u2019s early records impressed me tremendously. Tunes like \u2018Tautology,\u2019 \u2018Marshmallow,\u2019 and \u2018Fishin\u2019 Around.\u2019 I heard the fellows in his group building their lines with a design and general structure that was different from anything I\u2019d ever heard in jazz.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTechnique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument. This is a comprehensive technique . . . a feeling for the keyboard that will allow you to transfer any emotional utterance into it. What has to happen is that you develop a comprehensive technique and then say, forget that. I\u2019m just going to be expressive through the piano.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you begin to teach jazz, the most dangerous thing is that you tend to teach style\u2026I had eleven piano students, and I would say eight of them didn’t even want to know about chords or anything – they didn’t even want to do anything that anybody had ever done, because they didn’t want to be imitators. Well, of course, this is pretty naive\u2026but nevertheless it does bring to light the fact that if you\u2019re going to try to teach jazz\u2026you must abstract the principles of music which have nothing to do with style, and this is exceedingly difficult. So there, the teaching of jazz is a very touchy point. It ends up where the jazz player, ultimately, if he\u2019s going to be a serious jazz player, teaches himself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s performing without any really set basis for the lines and the content as such emotionally or, specifically, musically. And if you sit down and contemplate what you\u2019re going to do, and take five hours to write five minutes of music, then it\u2019s composed music. Therefore I would put it in the classical or serious, whatever you want to call it, written-music category. So there\u2019s composed music and there\u2019s jazz. And to me anybody that makes music using the process that we are using in Jazz, is playing Jazz.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m using the insides of sounds to move around in a very subtle way which, I think, ends up being inevitable. I feel its the only solution to that particular problem that I presented myself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially, I want my work\u2013and the trios if possible\u2013to sing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It\u2019s not. It\u2019s feeling.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m believe that all people are in possession of what might be called a \u2018universal musical mind.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m . . . a rather simple person with a limited talent and perhaps a limited perspective.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Cannonball Adderley<\/strong><\/span>
\n \u201cA young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Charlie Parker<\/strong><\/span>
\n \u201cMaster your instrument, Master the music, and then forget all that bullshit and just play.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMusic is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don\u2019t live it, it won\u2019t come out of your horn. They teach you there\u2019s a boundary line to music. But, man, there\u2019s no boundary line to art.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Clare Fischer –<\/strong>\u00a0He (Fischer) learned that in the studio producers are often a musician\u2019s worst enemy. \u201cThey always want you to do something else than what you are good at. Often I was asked to play like Joe Sample. With great difficulty I did what they asked me to do and felt terrible about it. One time I was working in the studio with Sample himself. During a break he came up to me and said to my great surprise, \u2018I want to tell you something that really bugs me. Every time I go into a recording session they ask me to lay down some of that shit that you do!\u2019\u201d \u00a0laughed Fischer.<\/span><\/p>\n

David Dean<\/strong><\/span>
\n \u201cPractice makes perfect, and nobody\u2019s perfect, so why practice?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Dizzy Gillespie<\/strong><\/span>
\n \u201cHow do I know why Miles walks off the stage? Why don\u2019t you ask him? And besides, maybe we\u2019d all like to be like Miles, and just haven\u2019t got the guts.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Duke Ellington<\/strong><\/span>
\n \u201cI\u2019m sure critics have their purpose, and they\u2019re supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what he did.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPlaying \u2018bop\u2019 is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA goal is a dream with a finish line.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMusic is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no art without intention.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBy and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn\u2019t want your daughter to associate with.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Charles Mingus <\/strong><\/span>
\n \u201cAnyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Art Tatum <\/strong><\/span>
\n \u201cThere is no such thing as a wrong note.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

“The English pianist Alan Clare was once intrigued with a workman who was carrying out some remodeling inside his house. Clare was playing some recordings, and he began to notice that the workman was whistling along with whatever music he put on – Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, it didn’t seem to matter. Even if he hadn’t heard it before, he had the natural musical ability to follow a melody closely and almost automatically. Clare decided to give him a real test and dug up his recording of Art Tatum doing “Tea For Two”, with the ground-breaking chord changes Tatum introduced into the tune. The workman never lost a beat nor did he lay out for a bar or two to figure out what was going on. He tracked Tatum flawlessly through all his changes, and when the record ended, he spoke for the first time. He glanced at Clare and with classic English understatement said, ‘Tricky f**ker, ain’t he?'”<\/span><\/p>\n

Art Blakey<\/strong> (On the word “jazz.”) \u201cThere\u2019s nothing wrong with it. It\u2019s only a word. What\u2019s in a name? Nothing! Cats say, \u201cCall me Muhammed so-and-so.\u201d But what\u2019s the difference? A name doesn\u2019t make the music. It\u2019s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music. Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that\u2019s it. No America, no jazz. I\u2019ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn\u2019t have a damn thing to do with Africa.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Max Roach<\/strong> In classical music, only two people are important, the composer and the conductor. Everybody else is a serf. In jazz, a thing of beauty is created collectively with everybody getting to express an idea. And that reflects what democratic society is — or should be.<\/span><\/p>\n

George Russell<\/strong> — and incidentally, I am not self-taught. Everybody who has given me a moment of beauty, significance or excitement has been a teacher.<\/span><\/p>\n

Paul Desmond
\n<\/strong>\u201cI think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI have won several prizes as the world\u2019s slowest alto player, as well as a special award in 1961 for quietness.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Stan Getz
\n<\/strong>\u201cThere are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. They are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence. These are the qualities I want to retain in my music.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception. All you can do is play melody. No matter how complicated it gets, it\u2019s still a melody.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It\u2019s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I\u2019ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that\u2019s what jazz music is all about.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often\u2014in fact, mostly\u2014at the expense of everything else in my life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Steve Lacy<\/strong><\/span>
\n \u201cIn fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gregor Piatigorsky<\/strong>
\nAs a young cellist I had played to an audience that had included Pablo Casals and reacted with poor, nervous playing. Casals sought me out after the concert and praised me highly, somewhat easing the pain and thinking him a very kind man.<\/span>
\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Years later I again ran into Casals and thanked him for being kind to a very nervous kid. Angry, he rushed to the cello. “Listen!” He played a phrase from the Beethoven sonata. “Didn’t you play this fingering? It was novel to me. It was good. And here, didn’t you attack that passage with an upbow, like this?” He went through Schumann and Bach, emphasizing all he liked that I had done.<\/span>
\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0“And for the rest,” he said passionately, “leave it to the ignorant and stupid, who judge by counting only the faults. I can be grateful, and so must you be, for even one note, one wonderful phrase.”<\/span>
\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I left with the feeling of having been with a great artist and friend.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pablo Casals<\/strong>, when asked at the age of 93 why he continued to practice hours each day, said “‘I’m beginning to notice some improvement…”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

An Anthropology of Everyday Life – Edward T. Hall <\/strong><\/span>
\n Good jazz is informal; church music is, as a rule, formal; symphonies are technical. Each is taught and learned in its own way. Formal learning shouts to the treetops that what is being learned is serious business. Technical learning is precise and linear. Informal learning in nonlinear, cooperative, and not controlled by anyone except the group; it is an organic, inside-out process<\/span><\/p>\n

Dudley Moore<\/strong> on the sensuality of Errol Garner’s music —- (He has) a smooth undulating arm that floats and caresses sweetly above a gently pulsating bass.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eddie Condon<\/strong><\/span>
\n \u201cThe boppers flat their fifths. We consume ours.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFinally Beiderbecke<\/strong> took out a silver cornet. He put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying \u2018yes.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Oscar Peterson
\n<\/strong>\u201cIt\u2019s the group sound that\u2019s important, even when you\u2019re playing a solo. You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That\u2019s jazz.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSome people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they\u2019re trying to say with jazz. You don\u2019t need any prologues, you just play. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cToo many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMontreal was a very active jazz center until club owners started putting in strippers instead of music. Before long, there was nothing to hear.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t do something because I think it will sell 30 million albums. I couldn\u2019t care less. If it sells one, it sells one.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

John Coltrane
\n<\/strong>\u201cSometimes I\u2019d think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Miles Davis
\n<\/strong>\u201cYou can\u2019t play nothing on modern trumpet that doesn\u2019t come from him, not even modern shit. I can\u2019t even remember a time when he sounded bad playing the trumpet. Never. Not even one time. He had great feeling up in his playing and he always played on the beat. I just loved the way he played and sang. (On Louis Armstrong)\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like to hear someone put down Dixieland. Those people who say there\u2019s no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll play it first and tell you what it is afterwards.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That\u2019s a little bit too much.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNothing is out of the question for me. I\u2019m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light\u2026Then I\u2019m grateful.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t play what\u2019s there, play what\u2019s not there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Louis Armstrong
\n<\/strong>\u201cIf I don\u2019t practice for a day, I know it. If I don\u2019t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don\u2019t practice for three days, the public knows it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMaking money ain\u2019t nothing exciting to me. You might be able to buy a little better booze than the wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat and when you die you\u2019re just as graveyard dead as he is.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ornette Coleman<\/strong><\/span>
\n \u201cMusicians tell me, if what I\u2019m doing is right, they should never have gone to school.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe in the Western world suffer from too many categories and classes; we\u2019ve forgotten that we all still have diapers on. We\u2019ve separated music from life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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Here are some great quotes for and about jazz musicians. Ahmad Jamal \u2013 \u201cYou don\u2019t create things, you discover things.\u201d Robertson Davies – Music is like wine, the less you know about it the sweeter you like it.\u00a0 Bill Dobbins .. we seldom suffer from taking our subject of study too seriously, but we usually suffer when we take ourselves too seriously. Bradford Marsalis – “My first task is to help students reject 18 years of poor learning that teaches them that knowledge is a product rather than a process.” Benny Green – \u201cA jazz musician is a juggler who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/page-full-width.php","meta":{"spay_email":""},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P4l8kt-pH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjazzscene.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1593"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjazzscene.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjazzscene.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjazzscene.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjazzscene.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1593"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/worldjazzscene.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2104,"href":"https:\/\/worldjazzscene.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1593\/revisions\/2104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjazzscene.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}