Jon Gordon Quotes

I didn't always have time to practice as much as I wanted to do, that was a real problem for me in high school and college.

[Phil wood] put on some [Igor] Stravinsky and say to follow the score, tell me to play me the opening to the Rite of Spring. Or, "I'm going to play you some 20th century obscure classical composer you don't know". Or, "Let's listen to some Charles Ives, let's sight read some Bartok violin duets", etc.

I think we had a Ben Webster/Gerry Mulligan record... that might have been it. We only had a few records in the house.

I had pestered [Phil Wood] for a long time. He finally agreed to do it. And I was excited and nervous and he couldn't have been nicer or more supportive from the minute I got to his house.

[Manhattan School Of Music] were kind of just getting the jazz program up and going when I first started there. I was 17 in September of 1984 when I started there.

Did you know you can take your bus anywhere you want to go? Say yes three times with me. Yes, yes, yes. You can take it to the movies, the beach or the North Pole. Just say where you want to go and believe that it will be so. Because every journey and ride begins with a desire to go somewhere and do something and if you have a desire then you also have the power to make it happen.

Negative people often tend to create negative cultures whereas positive corporate cultures are created by positive people.

A true leader doesn't lead to gain power. They lead to empower and give power away.

I would sit in at a jazz brunch [at sweet Basil] with Eddie Chamblee, who was a great tenor player. Really a kind man. The whole band was great.

I had made a couple of records in Europe. One as a leader, and one as a sideman before that. It was what it was. I started to work with Maria Schneider around that period and some other people, I started to get called to sub at the Vanguard in my mid-20s.

Successful people do ordinary things with extraordinary consistency, commitment and focus.

[My mother told me] stories about Nat King Cole, and Miles Davis, and seeing pictures in later years with band leaders like Alvino Ray.

I just think that I associated music with something that was healing and transformative as a kid.

Everybody wants the quick fix, but it doesn't happen overnight. You have to be willing to put it out there. I call it 'the secret to being an overnight success,' which means there really isn't a such thing as an overnight success. ! The secret is you work really hard for 10 years, and then you become an overnight success.

Sense of community was really fostered by Larry Laurenzano, who was a great educator.

[Larry Laurenzano] gave me a junior high school saxophone to take to high school, because I was always taking one of our school horns home to practice and I couldn't afford to buy one. He gave my friend, Tyrone, a tuba and he gave me a junior high saxophone for each of us to use at Performing Arts High School with. My audition piece was selections from Rocky. We were not sophisticated. But we had some spirit about it. We enjoyed it, and it was a way out.

Benny Carter came up to me and said to me, "You know, in the whole history of the alto, I think Phil is the guy we should all be emulating." The king! So look, I'm so blessed that my first hero took me in.

We listened [with my mother] to [Frank] Sinatra and Glen Campbell and we had some Beatles records that I liked. This was in the '70s.

I got to talk to people like Mel [Lewis] and Milt Hilton and Benny Carter and Clark Terry and... Jay McShann. I just found myself in some circumstances, on some gigs or sometimes in clubs, with the ability to talk to some of these people. Just being around their energy and being around that history was invaluable. And what I normally say to young people that are getting into the music, if you can and go... now there's less of those folks around, sadly.

I didn't have time to deal with practicing in a way that I would have liked to. I wish I could have just said, "I've got four to five hours every day that I'm going to go deal with music." I just didn't' have that. I missed a lot of lessons, but I think that maybe was frustrating to me in a big picture sense of, I need the time and energy to put into my instrument.

The goal is not to be better than anyone else but rather be better than you were yesterday.

Pretty fortunate that with the exception of two months when I was 23, that I worked in a law office pushing paper around. I was always able to eke out a living somehow. So I'm blessed.

Being positive won’t guarantee you’ll succeed. But being negative will guarantee you won’t.

When I got to Performing Arts, within the first week, a few days, Bill Charlap walked in and couldn't read music but he's playing all these solos from Keith Emerson of ELP, and Rick Wakeman from Yes. Real impressive rock piano and keyboard things. And we had really, truly amazing young 13-14 year old classical players in our year who had been practicing six, eight hours a day for eight years. So it was like "Whoa."

I remember Art Blakey saying to me, "Just remember, we're blessed to do what we do."

I feel very similarly. I didn't have necessarily the same exact kind of dynamic, but that means a lot when people are like that with you. Especially people like that. And I think [Phil Wood] felt a certain responsibility .

If you want to make [your own way in music] it as a player, which is very difficult, as Art Blakey said to me, "We're blessed to have the opportunity to do this." So just keep that in mind.

It's very unlikely you're a genius, but, if you're ready to work at it hard and you want to listen to music all the time and you want to learn about it and you want to be around the people who do it, you'll find your own way.

I did do an off-Broadway show for about 15 months. '91 and '92. It was nice to have a steady paycheck for a while. It was Oliver Jackson and Earl May, Art Barron and myself were the house band. I was 24 and 25 at the time.

Justin Di Cioccio led a jazz program at Music and Art, but there was no jazz in Performing Arts. After they joined, it became Laguardia School of Arts.

Instead of being disappointed about where you are, be optimistic about where you are going.

Ernie Hayes, Jimmy Lewis, and either Belton Evans or Khalil Mahdi on drums [were in Sweet Basil]. All those guys really took care of me.

[Phil Wood] was a great artist, and he knew things. He could be mildly conversant in several languages.

Sometimes I say to my students, "We get to come and listen to our favorite recordings and try to learn from them and emulate that and hopefully we can inspire other people the way we've been inspired."

Definitely I had a lot of times where I was really hard on myself. Really frustrated. But I never felt like I had someplace else to go. Just had to stay here and deal with this.

I don't know that there was a moment, like one specific moment where I was like "Ugh. Now what do I do?" I was just always like, "I'm just in here and if I have to fight with myself or ask for help or just be lost for a little while, but I'm just going to keep looking." Because music was all I had.

I never got to play with Art [ Blakey], but he was kind and spoke to me a number of times. He said, "You know, the people who are working 40 hours a week. Those are the ones who are really paying dues. Sitting at a desk doing the same thing every day. We're really blessed to do what we do."

Love takes time. It's a process not a goal. Love is something that needs to be nurtured. But if there is one thing I urge you to start immediately it's focus on bringing out the best in each person on your team. When you love someone you want the best for him. You want him to shine. And the best way to do this is to help him discover the value inside him.

I definitely had some moments, where, "Wow, these were some hard chords" on some gig.

[Eddie Locke] had a huge impact in my life. He was a great jazz drummer. He was mentored by Papa Joe Jones and he played for many years with Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge and actually got me on a gig with Roy Eldridge when I was 20 that I'll never forget.

There's a famous story about Dizzy [Gillespie] and Art Blakey taking him aside, and spending a whole night-long talk with [Phil Wood], "Man we believe in you. You can play. So don't be walking around with a frown on your face or whatever, getting yourself into trouble. You have got a gift, and nobody is going to take that away from you." So that meant the world to him.

The more energy you spend worrying about the people who didn't get on your bus, the less you will have for the people who are on your bus. And if you are worrying about the people who didn't get on your bus you won't have the energy to keep on asking new people to get on.

So often the difference between success and failure is belief. Belief leads to action and execution.

Letting people share their gifts and strengths is real love.

You do [jazz] because you love it and hope many some others may as well. You do this because you need it.

I think that's important to remember - That we're blessed to even be able to attempt to do this [music].

I was [ on Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition] with Ralph Bowen, and Joel Frahm, Jimmy Greene, John Ellis. You can't play the saxophone better than any of those guys play. So many of those things that those guys could do I wish I could do now, let alone then.

We often have to lose what we thought we wanted to find what God wants for us