Jazz Quotes

If you play jazz, then you play with your fingers. If you're playing rock, you use a pick. There's really no rhyme or reason to that other than that's just the way it has been.

I like to know for whom I'm writing - it makes the composition easier to do.

Most jazz players work out their solos, at least to the extent that they have a very specific vocabulary.

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be Jazz.

I'd like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I've heard.

Bernstein grew up in my building in New York. He's a very, very fine player. When he was a kid, he came by to find out what was going on in the world of jazz.

The wonderful thing about Jazz is its willingness to take chances.

Many people forget that Jazz, no matter what form it takes, must come from the heart as well as the mind.

To me, nostalgia is nothing more than a mindless plundering of the past for the commonplace.

Trombone virtuoso and innovative composer, Papo combines the best of jazz and Latin music to create a genre that is unique and wild. He's redefined Latin jazz!

A friend told me he'd risen above jazz. I leave him there.

I continued studying by myself in the field of jazz with my own technique of improvisation, walking bass lines, rhythms, all kinds of stuff, which I created for myself.

So the whole basis for jazz music is based on the fact that the bass player could not play his instrument.

I just try to do as good job with the material as I can and play some jazz as well, some improvised music, and do that every night. Just see where it goes.

My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.

Fortune ought to be a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.

My music isn't anything but me. It has jazz in it, and rock'n'roll, and it has an urgency to it.

I've learnt new scales through playing different types of music, like Indian raga scales, gipsy scales and harmonically-based jazz scales.

The whole reason for Jazz at the Philharmonic was to take it to places where I could break down segregation.

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.

For years, Jazz At The Philharmonic albums were the only ones of their kind.

I'm concerned with trend. I don't know where jazz fans will come from 20 years from now.

The economic picture in the States today doesn't allow for jazz concerts in a tour fashion. People now are too used to the Festival, which gives them more names for the same price.

The public, hearing pop music, is, without knowing it, also soaking up jazz.

I also like Western classical music and jazz.

On set, the playground for the character, how much it takes varies. Is it like ballet, is it like jazz? The content always lends itself to the form, and it's really not mathematics.

Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.

I was in punk rock bands, heavy metal bands, world music bands, jazz groups, any type of music that would take me. I just love music.

I've always wanted to record a jazz record. I did one in the '70s with Barbara Carroll. It's been a journey.

I can turn on some jazz guitarist, and he won't do a thing for me, if he's not playing electrically. But Jeff Beck's great to listen to.

If income was directly proportional to technical proficiency and education, classical and jazz musicians would be some of the most affluent people in the world.

To me, Bill's musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.

It's the repetitive thing that brings space. That's one of the things I love secretly about hip-hop. Jazz doesn't have that element. It changes every bar, nothing is ever the same.

I feel like certain people think that certain styles of music will taint their jazz style.

After I exhausted the blues thing, I got into jazz.

There are singers that I have enjoyed, from Nina Simone and Ray Charles onward. But the music that made music the number one thing for me as a youth was jazz.

It quickly becomes apparent that in the gray area between jazz, R&B and soul, Tony Adamo is one of the top voices.

Let me whisper it. Let me sigh it. Let me sing it, my dear or I will cry it.

I think what we need is a more welcoming mode from the people who put on a hundred million country-western shows on television. How about a monthly jazz show?

Many jazz artists go to L.A. seeking a more comfortable life and then they really stop playing.

Jazz has an audience all around the globe and has had for many decades, I think speaking of the United States, let's say that what we need is more of an official recognition.

I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.

I learn something new every day.

I compulsively reach for perfection in music, often at the expense of everything else in my life.

I played in rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands.

I find my inspiration in myself.

Jazz is my adventure.

Jazz is such a powerful cultural statement that it's almost as if it's intertwined with society.

Whenever there's a change with Jazz & its aesthetics, it's almost always reflected with a change in the culture.

I still insist that American performers are the best performers in the world.