Jazz Quotes

Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life.

Music is my religion. Music is the only thing that has never failed me. People let you down, music won't.

Music is interior decoration.

All the music you've ever heard in your life is somewhere in your head. I don't reject that, I use it.

Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.

I hope we left you with something to put under your pillows.

If everyone liked what I did, I probably wouldn't be playing anything of depth.

Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now.

A Jazz man should be saying what he feels: humor, sadness, joy... all the things that humans have.

Sometimes there are no gigs, but the main thing is the music. You can't take that away. The only person who can take that away from you is you.

If I'm not saying it in four choruses or less, then I'm not saying it.

The hippest thing you can do is not play at all. Just listen.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Is jazz a rhythm, or is it a vibration?

As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something thats never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.

I think music as we know it, is autobiographical.

All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

You can't sing about love unless you know about it.

I would like to be a scholar in whatever I do, a scholar is never finished, he is always seeking and I am always seeking.

One of the great moments of my life was when I could write musician on my passport.

Amsterdam must have more than a million people. But the only area where jazz is really profitable and successful in an economic sense is in Japan. That's because they haven't been exposed enough.

Clifford Brown was in the jazz circles considered to be probably the greatest trumpet player who ever lived.

Every ‘mistake’ is an opportunity in jazz.

You don't have to live the blues to play the blues.

Music chooses her musicians.

Jazz is one of the best things that you can find in your life, it can always be your friend.

I have been doing music all my life so everyday when I get up I expect music will be part of it.

I don't separate one era of jazz from another, because I listen to everybody... Everybody takes from everybody else and adds their own thing and goes on from there.

Jazz is letting everybody do his or her thing with the music.

Well, being a jazz musician is not a rose garden!

Reading to kids is to ordinary reading what jazz is to a string quartet.

I think Wes Montgomery is the greatest jazz guitarist that ever lived.

If a jazz player is really playing, the classical player will have to respect him.

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments & collectively create a thing of beauty.

After two takes you're imitating yourself.

Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.

If the audience doesn't hear what is going on, is it going on?

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your magnificent indifference.

Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does.

I always think of music as interior decoration. So, if you have all kinds of music, you are fully decorated!

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.

Once I could play what I heard inside me, that's when I was born.

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with.

Jazz I regard as an American folk music; not the only one, but a very powerful one which is probably in the blood and feeling of the American people more than any other style of folk music.

Once you discover that you can, then you must.

It isn't true that you live only once. You only die once. You live lots of times if you know how.