Best 709 quotes in «jazz quotes» category

I was interested in Armstrong to begin with because he is the most important figure in Jazz in the 20th Century. There's simply no question about it. I mean, if you're going to compare him to somebody, it's Shakespeare in terms of centrality of the tradition, in being at the beginning of it.

I was introduced to jazz, and that's become a basic concern and passion of mine ever since.

I wasn't so interested in being paid. I wanted to be heard. That's why I'm broke.

I wasn't a trained Mickey Mouse club performer. I played in jazz clubs and restaurants.

I wasn't very aware of pop music because I attended an arts school. For me, it was all about jazz.

I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.

I was very adamant about not being called a jazz singer, but now I've embraced it. The way I approach music is through jazz, so I'm a jazz singer.

I was totally into jazz in my teens.

I was used to dancing, but only when someone told you what to do. So in the nightclub I was all over the place, I combined everything. Street dance, modern dance, a bit of jazz and ballet, I was Twyla Tharp, I was Alvin Ailey, I was Michael Jackson. I didn't care, I was free.

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.

I would love to make a real jazz album someday because I never have. But that's something I'm not in a rush to do.

Jazz can be so serious, no sense of humor.

Jazz has the ability to absorb & transform influences from diverse musical styles.

Jane Monheit is skyrocketing up the jazz charts. By next year, we won't be able to get her.

Jazz, for me, is a closed circuit, like the term baroque in the world of classical music.

Jazz is a beautiful word. I love it.

Jazz is America's classical music.

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!

Jazz is not a 'form' but a collection of tags and tricks.

Jazz is part folk art, part progressive art.

Jazz is restless. It won't stay put & it never will.

Jazz is so incestuous that it's starting to kill itself.

Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now.

Jazz is the favorite music [of America]. It is a type of music invented by [American] Blacks to please their primitive tendencies and desire for noise.

Jazz is the music of unemployment.

Jazz music by its very nature is just a conglomerate of a lot of different kinds of music.

Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere.

Jazz music just resonates with the frequency of me.

Jazz of the sort we play is a happy, extroverted music. You don't have to think about it too much.

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.'

"Jazz" to begin with, is a really bad word... all the true musicians that really play jazz, jazz is the worst word for it. Jazz is a process. Jazz is a creative process. It's not so much a genre, but a way of expression.

Jazz comes from a tradition where it swings. Swing was the main ingredient of jazz. And once it loses the swing...well, that's it.

Jazz demands that you bring to it things that are valuable to you, that are personal to you.

Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate in order to get the most out of it. You must absorb it.

Jazz is one of the few things you can do in society and express yourself freely and creatively.

Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America.

Jazz music is the power of now.

Jazz music will continue to thrive, possibly in unexpected ways.

Jazz should be much less about stress on technical exhibitionism and much more on emotional content.

Jazz was always cool. That was what I liked about jazz - it was always cool. Now I see the cats that were basically cool getting kind of uncool. So that ruins what I feel about jazz.

Jazz was formerly a crude term for indulging in an action which in polite society is referred to, if at all, only with such vague Latin terms as intercourse and cohabitation.

Jazz was my first love.

John Stowell plays jazz, but he doesn’t use any of the clichés; he has an incredible originality. John is a master creator.

Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music.

Jazz is like a great blues band that fell down the stairs

Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that.

Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms.

Jazz is the music of the body.