Best 709 quotes in «jazz quotes» category

As far as music school goes, I walked through Berkelee one time.

As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music.

As I've grown older I've been more influenced by more meandering styles of guitar playing, whether it's Celtic or Ethiopian folk music or some kind of noisier jazz like Sonny Sharrock. In terms of songwriting, I don't know that I could even pin it down.

At a time when individualism is becoming an endangered species, jazz represents a celebration of the individual.

Bebop was like humming along to Mitch Miller to me.

Bebop has set music back twenty years.

Bach was a top harmonist geezer, which is why the jazz cats love him.

[Bebop is] Chinese music.

Because it has such a ragged movement. It suggests something like that.

[Billy Strayhorn] understood the violin as well as he understood Jazz, and he wrote for the violin as a violin.

Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet.

Blues and jazz pulled me away from what was left of my family.

Blow your life through your horn.

Bop is no love-child of jazz.

Bop is at the end of the road. Now everybody wants dance music.

But no one, when you stop to think, has ever equated abstract expressionism as a movement with jazz music. It's based on improvisation. The rhythms, the personal involvement, all of this is part of the jazz experience.

Brownstein's is a fresh and jaunty voice, with a jazz snap all his own.

Brubeck, for instance, is not careless. He's a studied guy. And even if his picture ends up on the back cover of Life, he's still a studious guy.

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.

Charlie Parker lifted jazz music off the dance floor and into the stratosphere!

Change is always happening. That's one of the wonderful things about Jazz music.

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

Coltrane was moving out of jazz into something else. And certainly Miles Davis was doing the same thing.

Clouds float in the same pattern only once.

Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!

Coltrane would do what you'd get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians.

Comedy is the ultimate truth. Jazz is hitting the notes that that no one else would hit, and comedy is saying words that no one else would say.

Day in, day out. That same old voodoo follows me about.

Composing is improvisation slowed down.

Damn it, when I'm bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic-take it or leave it.

[David] Bowie went on to make best-selling music - funk, dance music, electronic music, while also being influenced by cabaret and jazz.

Companies have to take risks to get new knowledge, in a manner similar to how jazz musicians take risks when they go after a new approach to a tune or a performance.

Diplomacy is like jazz: endless variations on a theme.

Diana Krall knocks me out. I like jazz and I like her simple approach.

Dizzy, Duke and Charlie Parker were the greatest jazz legends of all time.

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

Don't be a perfectionist... leave that to the classical musicians.

Don t play this piece fast. It is never right to play ragtime fast.

Europeans really provided many venues over there and hailed the jazz artists, and a lot of musicians went over there and stayed over there for a long time. A lot of them moved over there, lived over there, and died over there.

Don't believe that jazz about there's nothing you can do, "turn on and drop out, man" - because you've got to turn on and drop in, or they're going to drop all over you.

Everybody in all countries tries to play jazz.

Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new.

Everything I've ever done was out of fear of being mediocre.

Everything-everything-was communicated through the sound of the music. There were no other signals of any kind ever-no count-offs, head nods, spoken instructions...nothing.

External instruments are only extensions of the biological instrument.

For me personally - because I do it myself - the scoring of a picture is fun. I edit the picture and when I've finished I go into my room and I have many many records - jazz, classical and popular music. And I have this all at my disposal. I don't have to get a composer.

For me jazz is kind of an extension of hip-hop. Kind of the sad thing is that a lot of jazz people just listen to jazz, and a lot of hip-hop people just listen to hip-hop, and there's not a lot of crossover, unfortunately.

For me, the main thing is spontaneity & taking chances.

Flexibility is an essential part of Jazz. It's what gives Jazz music the ability to combine with all other types of music and not lose its identity.