Êðûëàòûå ôðàçû î äæàçå è ìóçûêå
"I am a servant of the music...if I get caught up in ego, I'll lose everything...it'll burn and that's a guarantee...""
—Eric Clapton
The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking "Is there a meaning to music?" My answer would be, "Yes", And "Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?" My answer to that would be "No."
—Aaron Copland
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
—Abraham Maslow
When the music changes, so does the dance.
—African proverb
A master drummer must have seven eyes.
—African proverb
The truest expression of a people is in its dance and music.
—Agnes de Mille
Jazz does not belong to one race or culture, but is a gift that America has given the world.
—Ahmad Alaadeen
New Orleans is the only place I know of where you ask a little kid what he wants to be and instead of saying "I want to be a policeman," or "I want to be a fireman," he says, I want to be a musician".
—Alan Jaffe
It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception. (When asked about the theory of relativity)
—Albert Einstein
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice.
—Albert Einstein
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible,is music.
—Aldous Huxley
A real leader faces the music, even if he doesn't like the tune.
—Anon
Hawk, I heard that record you made with Sonny Rollins! Don't ever do it again!
—anonymous fan to Coleman Hawkins
Jazz washes away the dust of every day life.
—Art Blakey
Jazz is... One of life's greatest gifts: fun found within surprise.
—Author Unknown
Jazz is... An open-ended music designed for open minds.
—Author Unknown
If it's too loud, you're too old!
—Barrythemod
ahhh cartoons America's only native art form. I don't count jazz because it sucks.
—Bart Simpson
If Charlie Parker were alive today, somebody would try to cut a disco single with and try and get him to sell three million.
—Ben Sidran
Art is self expression. If you are expressing someone else's personality, that is not art.
—Bennie Wallace
Anyone can learn what Louis Armstrong knows about music in a few weeks. Nobody could learn to play like him in a thousand years.
—Benny Green
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
—Berthold Auerbach
...it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.
—Bill Evans
Perhaps 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.
—Bill Evans
Talent is cheap, and many talents treat themselves cheaply.
—Bill Evans
Jazz is a mental attitude rather than a style. It uses a certain process of the mind expressed spontaneously through some musical instrument. I'm concerned with retaining that process.
—Bill Evans
"Music, for me, has always been a place where anything is possible--a refuge, a magical world where anyone can go, where all kinds of people can come together, and anything can happen. We are limited only by our imaginations.
—Bill Frisell
I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know.
—Billie Holliday
There is jazz in our music but there is a funk element too. People have labeled us organic acid jazz but we aren't too keen on that. I prefer Sanford and Sun Ra!
—Billy Martin, drums / percussion (MMW)
The thing that is making jazz healthy today is that people are coming out of other backgrounds - from rock, folk, from ethnic music. It's changing the music, and for the better.
—Billy Taylor
One thing I like about jazz, kid, is that I don't know what's going to happen next. Do you?
—Bix Beiderbecke
This is positively not an album to play while you do a doctorate thesis on "Bergson, Webern and Charles the Vicious, Paradox or Ambiguity?"
—Bob Brookmeyer
The whole thing of being in music is not to control it but to be swept away by it. If you're swept away by it you can't wait to do it again and the same magical moments always come.
—Bobby Hutcherson
My own feelings about the direction in which jazz should go are that there should be much less stress on technical exhibitionism and much more on emotional content, on what might be termed humanity in music and the freedom to say all that you want.
—Booker Little
Not to deny that it is a thinking people's music, but when I listen to music if I ever catch myself thinking, I'm in trouble--I know something is wrong.
—Brian Blade
Hipness is not a state of mind, It's a fact of life!
—Cannonball Adderley
What's interesting about a person without problems?
—Carla Bley
Surrender your whole being to a note, and gravity disappears...with one chord, John Lee Hooker could tell a story as deep as the ocean.
—Carlos Santana
Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread--without it, it's flat.
—Carmen McRae
Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself.
—Cecil Taylor
Doesn't that fool know I recorded that song because I like it?
—Cecil Taylor
Thelonius Monk went over to Bird and Bud Powell and said, 'I told you guys to act crazy, but I didn't tell you to fall in love with the act. You're really crazy now.'
—Charles Mingus
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
—Charles Mingus
In the midst of creating, a person is raised to another level of consciousness that doesn't have that much to do with everyday thinking. It's as if you could imagine life before there were words.
—Charlie Haden
...don't think of yourself as a jazz musician. Think of yourself as a human being who plays music.
—Charlie Haden
I am a devout musician.
—Charlie Parker
Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.
—Charlie Parker
You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.
—Charlie Parker
If you don't live it, It won't come out of your horn.
—Charlie Parker
I'm very glad to have met you. I like your playing very much.
—Charlie Parker to Jean-Paul Sartre
Only play what you hear. If you don't hear anything, don't play anything.
—Chick Corea
Jazz is like a great void, it waits patiently until a brave musician takes control of space and time.
—Chris Griffin
Count Basie was college, but Duke Ellington was graduate school.
—Clark Terry
Imitate, assimilate, and innovate.
—Clark Terry
[Music]...if you don't make mistakes you aren't really trying.
—Coleman Hawkins
Respect your own creativity and respect the creativity and creative space of other people.
—Danny Barker
Damn it, when I'm bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic-take it or leave it.
—Dave Brubeck
It's always interesting to me that any time anyone hears something new they immediately have to categorize it or they don't feel comfortable. It's also one way not to experience something.
—Dave Friedman
We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.
—Decca in response to the Beatles, 1962
I hope we left you with something to put under your pillows.
—Dexter Gordon
Men have died for this music. You can't get more serious than that.
—Dizzy Gillespie
It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.
—Dizzy Gillespie
When people believe in boundaries, they become part of them.
—Don Cherry
The day I met Ornette [Coleman], it was about 90 degrees and he had on an overcoat. I was scared of him.
—Don Cherry
Every note Roy (Eldridge) played had meaning and life...his feelings pushed the valves down, not his fingers.
—Don Ferrara
All the music you've ever heard in your life is somewhere in your head. I don't reject that, I use it.
—Don Pullen
Music is what we need when language fails us, but we cannot remain silent.
—Dr. Cornel West
Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It's not an occupation or profession, it's a compulsion.
—Duke Ellington
Roaming through the jungle of "Ohs" and "Ahs" searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats.
—Duke Ellington
Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young.
—Duke Ellington
It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line
—Duke Ellington
Retire to what?
—Duke Ellington
It's like an act of murder-you play with intent to commit something.
—Duke Ellington
You may have holes in your shoes, but don't let the people out front know it. Shine the tops.
—Earl Hines
Musicians should never forget that we're blessed. We have a special gift that people can enjoy through us. We've had the good fortune to receive this and pass it along to others.
—Ed Thigpen
As it enters the ear, does it come in like broken glass, or does it come in like honey?
—Eddie Condon
They flat their fifths, we drink ours.
—Eddie Condon
Finally Beiderbecke came out with a silver cornet. He put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying 'yes'.
—Eddie Condon on Bix Beiderbecke
That within you that draws breath is where the music is.
—Elena Gillespie
It isn't where you came from, it's where you're going that counts.
—Ella Fitzgerald
I feel very, very gratified when people are complimentary to what I have done or appreciated it with sincerity... It makes me feel that maybe I did do something that was proper and that was right.
—Elvin Jones
Jazz is a feeling, more than anything else. It isn't music, it's language...
—Enos Payne
It is only by introducing the young to great literature, drama and music, and to the excitement of great science that we open to them the possibilities that lie within the human spirit-enable them to see visions and dream dreams.
—Eric Anderson
I am a servant of the music...if I get caught up in ego, I'll lose everything...it'll burn and that's a guarantee..."
—Eric Clapton
...I think people overemphasize the importance of gear in their search for tone. Your sound comes from how you pick and dampen the strings and from your attack as much as anything...
—Eric Johnson
If I'd known I was going to live to be a hundred I'd have taken much better care of myself.
—Eubie Blake
Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth, truth is not beauty, beauty is not love, love is not music, music is the BEST.
—Frank Zappa
Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny.
—Frank Zappa
Without music, life would be a mistake.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Music is my religion. Music is the only thing that has never failed me. People let you down, music won't.
—Gary Bartz
Musicians in the fifties were the very epitome of everything cool. Just the presence of Miles Davis and John Coltrane lowered the earth's average temperature by 2.4 degrees...
—Genius Guide to Jazz, April 2001
As the Avant Garde movement tore down every wall of the old establishment, only one rule that had stood from the very inception of jazz remained: no accordions.
—Genius Guide to Jazz, May 2001
Many jazz aficionados felt that Jazz completely overlooked or deliberately disregarded the contributions of non-human musicians. It is well-known among jazz scholars that pioneering tenor saxophonist Frankie Traumbauer was, in fact, a very large raccoon.
—Genius Guide to Jazz, June 2001
Davis understood that the space between the notes was sometimes just as important as the notes themselves. But he also understood that too much space between the notes, and people would think that the concert was over and go home...
—Genius Guide to Jazz, July 2001
Using arpeggios of the underlying chords in his solos, not merely confining himself to the notes in and around the melodic theme, Parker seriously increased the syllable count of the paragraphs describing his playing.
—Genius Guide to Jazz, August 2001
The history of the piano goes back almost to the beginning of recorded history (recorded on the Decca Label, reissued by Rhino).
—Genius Guide to Jazz, September 2001
By the Be-bop era, jazz drumming had become as technically demanding as trying to undo a four-hook bra strap while driving a stick-shift.
—Genius Guide to Jazz, November 2001
For his contributions to jazz, Kenny G should be: (D) Smeared with bacon grease, placed in a cage with three underfed Kodiak grizzly bears, and whatever happens, happens.
—Genius Guide to Jazz, January 2004
Blakey continued as an ambassador, defender and professor right up until just shortly after his death at age 71 on October 16, 1990 (he had a gig already scheduled for the 18th, and Art was nothing if not dependable).
—Genius Guide to Jazz, For Art's Sake
An early influence was "Wild Bill" Davis, perhaps the best-known organist of his time, who was so mean he once shot a man for snoring. Or am I thinking of Marian McPartland?
—Genius Guide to Jazz, Pulling Out All the Stops
Young Ray (Charles) won the right to pursue the piano in the landmark Supreme Court decision Robinson v. Some Dumbass Crackers (1939)
—Genius Guide to Jazz, What I Say
...the Delta style would become in itself one of the most influential trends in American music since an unknown woman threw her panties on the stage during a performance by Enrico Caruso.
—Genius Guide to Jazz, January 2004
Wynton at last came into his own as jazz's foremost figure; equal parts cheerleader, oral historian, artist, educator, and vodka with a dash of Angostura bitters, Worcestershire sauce, and a pearl onion.
—Genius Guide to Jazz, September 2003
He envisioned a chain of AAJ-themed all-you-can-eat catfish buffets, and an invincible zombie army that would hunt down and eat anyone with a top forty single until jazz is restored to its rightful place in American culture...
—Genius Guide to Jazz, December 2003
His first attempt to create an authoritative site is hampered by his medium, the Etch-a-sketch, which suffered from several inherent drawbacks.
—Genius Guide to Jazz, December 2003
...jazz fans are on average more affluent than the run-of-the-mill mullet-impaired AC/DC fans who control vital sections of our janitorial and 30-minute oil change industries.
—Genius Guide to Jazz, December 2001
The Jazz Diet will make you thinner, taller, smarter, richer, happier, hipper, leaner, meaner, keener, more attractive to members of every sex, and able to do those newspaper cryptoquote puzzles in one go.
—Genius Guide to Jazz, February 2005
All About Jazz is to jazz on the Internet what Miles Davis was to moody bastards with trumpets.
—Genius Guide to Jazz, November 2005
Music is the vernacular of the human soul.
—Geoffrey Latham
The technical history of modern harmony is a history of growth of toleration by the human ear of chords that at first sounded discordant and senseless to the main body of contemporary professional musicians.
—George Bernard Shaw
Regarding jam sessions: Jazz musicians are the only workers I can think of who are willing to put in a full shift for pay and then go somewhere else and continue to work for free.
—George Carlin
Boxing is like jazz, the better it is, the less people appreciate it.
—George Foreman
True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.
—George Gershwin
Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise...
—George Gershwin
The history of a people are found in its songs.
—George Jellinek
If America has a future, Jazz has a future. The two are inseparable.
—George Russell
I don't just write music to esthetically satisfy somebody. The reason I write music is that I feel it's a vehicle or channel which leads to your true self, your essence.
—George Russell
When people ask me how is it I was a musician, I facetiously say that I'm a firm believer in reincarnation and in a previous life I was Johann Sebastian Bach's guide dog.
—George Shearing
I think there are only three things that America will be known for 2,000 years from now when they study this civilization: the Constitution, jazz music and baseball. They're the three most beautifully designed things this culture has ever produced.
—Gerald Early, Scholar
Life on the road is murder. It's as though life begins and ends when you have your horn in your mouth.
—Gerry Mullligan
I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights; and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality.
—H.A. Overstreet
Where words fail, music speaks.
—Hans Christian Anderson
Art leaves something to the listener; that's what separates art from craft.
—Henry Threadgill
Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except the best.
—Henry Van Dyke
Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission that goes far beyond just making music for the sake of music.
—Herbie Hancock
Traveling with a big band is like being an inmate in a traveling zoo.
—Hoagy Charmichael
We all have to open our minds, stretch forth, take chances and venture out musically to try and arrive at something new and different.
—Horace Silver
Music is the great arbiter of the world, the key to central harmony, and a necessary requirement of human emotion.
—Hsun Tzu
I'm not here to raise hippie consciousness, I'm here to wet some panties.
—Jaco Pastorius
At heart I've always been a jazz man.
—James Brown
I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday, and take it front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it.
—James Taylor
Technically, I'm not a guitar player, all I play is truth and emotion.
—Jimi Hendrix
Knowledge speaks but wisdom listens.
—Jimi Hendrix
Music is my religion.
—Jimi Hendrix
I want to play music that draws a picture of the world and its space.
—Jimi Hendrix
Anytime a person can play the blues, he has a soul and he has a 'lift' to play anything else he wants to play. It's sort of like the foundation to a building.
—Jimmy Rushing
The hardest thing for a musician to learn is how to play WITH people. That's what made the Basie rhythm section.
—Jo Jones
If you're going to make a mistake, make it loud so everybody else sounds wrong.
—Joe Venuti
You can't rehearse a blues, darlin'.
—Joe Williams
It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.
—Johann Sebastian Bach
I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once.
—John Coltrane
Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music as if for the first time, as if I had never heard it before. Being so inescapably a part of it, I'll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels, and that's too bad.
—John Coltrane
I'm into scales right now.
—John Coltrane
The life of the arts is far from an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is close to the center of a nation's purpose-and is a test of the quality of a nations' civilization.
—John F. Kennedy
A little bit if listening with a passable ear will get an awful lot of messages anywhere.
—John Hendricks
The reward for playing jazz is playing jazz.
—John Lewis
Music is born out of the inner sounds within a soul; all the music that was ever heard came from the inner silence in every musician.
—John McLaughlin
Silence also swings.
—John Mehegan
Sam Phillips always encouraged me to do it my way, to use whatever other influences I wanted, but never to copy...if there hadn't been a Sam Phillips, I might still be working in a cotton field.
—Johnny Cash
Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.
—Johnny Griffin
Jazz is an art form that depends on its antecedents, there must be respect for the people that have gone before.
—Jon Hendricks
Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone.
—Josephine Baker
If everyone liked what I did, I probably wouldn't be playing anything of depth.
—Joshua Redman
I think music as we know it, is autobiographical.
—Julius Hemphill
Music isn't just learning notes and playing them, you learn notes to play to the music of your soul.
—Katie Greenwood
Music isn't just learning notes and playing them. You learn notes to play the music of your soul.
—Katie Greenwood
Your skill is proportionate to your interest.
—Kenn Ash
Let your life be your music and let your music be your life.
—Kevin Eubanks
The worst crime is faking it.
—Kurt Cobain
[Jazz singing] is like pornography. You can't say what it is, but you know it when you see it.
—Kurt Elling
There are no natural barriers. It's all music. It's either hip or it ain't.
—Lee Morgan
The hippest thing you can do is not play at all. Just listen.
—Lennie Tristano
Music is the shorthand of emotion.
—Leo Tolstoy
Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance.
—Leo Tolstoy
As a guitarist Charlie[Parker] was simply the best around...he had a way of getting on one note and driving it right into the ground.
—Les Paul
Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life.
—Lester Bowie
We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.
—Louis Armstrong
Man, if you have to ask what it (jazz) is, you'll never know.
—Louis Armstrong
What we play is life.
—Louis Armstrong
Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.
—Ludwig Von Beethoven
Music is a higher revelation than philosophy.
—Ludwig Von Beethoven
As far as being a 'player's player,' you've only got to go to Nashville or Argentina and you can forget about it. The world is full of amazing guitar players, and you know it, and I know it...it's a humbling experience...
—Mark Knopfler/Dire Straits
Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
—Mark Twain
I wonder what an agent would do if he had to travel with the band he's booking.
—Mary Lou Williams
Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers.
—Max Roach
Oh, jazz and love are the hardest things to describe from rationale.
—Mel Torme
To me, nostalgia is nothing more than a mindless plundering of the past for the commonplace.
—Mel Torme
A good player can make any guitar sound good.
—Michael Bloomfield
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.
—Mike Stern
You have to be born with it. You can't even buy it. If you could buy it, they'd have it at the next Newport Festival.
—Miles Davis
Music is an addiction.
—Miles Davis
Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.
—Miles Davis
I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.
—Miles Davis
When you're creating your own shit, even the sky ain't the limit.
—Miles Davis
I'll play it first and tell you what it is later.
—Miles Davis
If they act too hip, you know they can't play shit.
—Miles Davis
Do not fear mistakes, there are none.
—Miles Davis
I never heard of a jazz musician who retired. You love what you do, so what are you going to do? Play for the walls?
—Nat Adderley
Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
The idea is more important than the style or the contents of the style you're trying to play in.
—Ornette Coleman
It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something.
—Ornette Coleman
It's the hidden things, the subconscious that lies in the body and lets you know: you feel this, you play this.
—Ornette Coleman
Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.
—Ornette Coleman
All of the sounds of the earth are like music.
—Oscar Hammerstein
It's the group sound that's important, even when you're 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's jazz.
—Oscar Peterson
Music makes on feel so romantic-at least it always gets on one's nerves-which is the same thing nowadays.
—Oscar Wilde
Without music, life is a journey through a desert.
—Pat Conroy
Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now.
—Pat Martino
...to me if it's anything, jazz is a verb-it's more like a process than it is a thing.
—Pat Metheny
I would also like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age.
—Paul Desmond
The qualities in music which I considered most important -- and still do -- were beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination, and sincerity.
—Paul Desmond
I have won several prizes as the world's slowest alto player, as well as a special award in 1961 for quietness.
—Paul Desmond
I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.
—Paul Desmond
I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.
—Paul Desmond
Jazz is the folk music of the machine age.
—Paul Whiteman
The problem with jazz is that it is hidden in plain sight.
—Peter Gordon, Thirsty Ear Records
Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.
—Pietro Mascagni
The high note is not the only thing.
—Placido Domingo
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.
—Plato
Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness and life to everything.
—Plato
I would teach children music, physics and philosophy; but most importantly music, for in the patterns of music and all the arts are the keys of learning.
—Plato
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.
—Quincy Jones
Music should never be harmless.
—Robbie Robertson
There is no truer truth obtainable by Man than comes of music
—Robert Browning
In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that no one else has thought of.
—Robert Schumann
Wes Montgomery played impossible things on the guitar because it was never pointed out to him that they were impossible.
—Ronnie Scott
Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule.
—Samuel Butler
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
—Samuel Butler
When Bird came on the scene, it was just as shocking as in the Bible: everything was dark, and then the light appeared for the first time.
—Shorty Rogers
Music is love in search of a word.
—Sidney Lanier
Whenever society gets too stifling and the rules too complex, there's some sort of musical explosion.
—Slash/Guns and Roses
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.
—Sonny Criss
I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress...so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.
—Sonny Rollins
Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.
—Sonny Rollins
I'm fortunate that I'm making a living at it now because I'm not equipped to do anything else.
—Sonny Rollins
One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.
—Sonny Rollins
No one is original. Everyone is derivative.
—Sonny Rollins
Even if you have some brilliant jazz ideas, it's going to be difficult to get them across unless you have (a) a distinctive sound or (b) a loud sound. These are musts.
—Sonny Rollins
The value of jazz still has to be clarified. People involve themselves with its superficialities without digging for its soul.
—Stan Getz
You don't rehearse jazz to death to get the camera angles.
—Stan Getz
A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other's ideas.
—Stan Getz
Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
—Stan Kenton
When you get to the top, don't forget to send the elevator down for the next guy.
—Stan Kenton
I think that a musician is like a doctor, he's supposed to heal people and make them feel better.
—Steve Turre
The world thinks that music is a commercial commodity. I'm glad that is not my code.
—Sun Ra
Where human eyes have never seen, where human beings have never been, I build a world of abstract dreams, and I wait for you.
—Sun Ra
You are the music while the music lasts.
—T.S. Eliot
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
—Thelonious Monk
Jazz is freedom. You think about that.
—Thelonius Monk
I don't know where jazz is going. Maybe it's going to hell. You can't make anything go anywhere. It just happens.
—Thelonius Monk
Man, that cat is nuts!
—Thelonius Monk on Ornette Coleman
Like everything else in nature, music is a becoming, and it becomes its full self, when its sounds and laws are used by intelligent man for the production of harmony, and so made the vehicle of emotion and thought.
—Theodore Mungers
Your horn is your passport to the world.
—Tommy Smith
The golden curves and gorgeous sound of the saxophone have blown throughout the world like a beautiful breeze, inspiring many to study its charms.
—Tommy Smith
Tomorrow you'll wish you had practiced harder today.
—Tommy Smith
The saxophone's sonic possibilities are limitless, like an aural kaleidoscope. Its sound inspires sensuality but it but can rock out and scream with anger and frustration.
—Tommy Smith
I think one of the reasons I'm popular again is because I'm wearing a tie. You have to be different.
—Tony Bennett
Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
—Truman Capote
Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
—Victor Hugo
Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.
—Warren G. Bennis
Regardless of what you play, the biggest thing is keeping the feel going.
—Wes Montgomery
People whose sensibility is destroyed by music in trains, airports, lifts, cannot concentrate on a Beethoven Quartet.
—Witold Lutoslawski
The trouble with this country is that everything is new. We don't have any consideration for the past... Just because something is old, you don't just rip it down. You can renovate it instead of ripping it down and building something new.
—Woody Shaw
How great musicians demonstrate a mutual respect and trust on the bandstand can alter your outlook on the world and enrich every aspect of your life, understanding what it means to be a global citizen in the most modern sense.
—Wynton Marsalis
Jazz music is the power of now. There is no script. It's conversation. The emotion is given to you by musicians as they make split-second decisions to fulfill what they feel the moment requires.
—Wynton Marsalis
Because of (early jazz writers) lack of understanding of the mechanics of music, they thought there weren't any mechanics. It was the "they all can sing, they all have rhythm" syndrome. If that was the case, why was there only one Louis Armstrong?
—Wynton Marsalis
External instruments are only extensions of the biological instrument.
—Yusef Lateef
As long as you've got your horn in your mouth, you're developing.
—Zoot Sims
