Quotes About Jazz

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

I'm not a jazz musician, because, I mean, firstly, I can't play anything. I'm not bad on the tamborine. I have a certain way with the triangle. But I'm not a jazz musician ... my band, they always joke, they always say that I'm a disposable, pop, jazz superstar.

Sometimes when I do a joke and it doesn't get a lot of laughs, it kind of feels like I'm doing jazz. That's kinda cool because jazz is cool, but sometimes jazz sucks ... Maybe I'm the Kenny G of comedy.

In a way, the history of jazz's development is a small mirror of classical music's development through the centuries. Now jazz is a living form of original music, while classical music has gotten to the end of its cycle in terms of exploring its form.

Everything comes from one thing, everything comes from the Spirit. Jazz would not exist had it not been for gospel music, the blues would not exist had it not been for spiritual blues, which goes back to slave songs our fore fathers were singing while they were out in the field. So it's all one continuous growth from one group of people. Of course jazz now is played by various cultures and colors around the world. But the stimulus is One Voice.

The black hole in democracy is integrity. The great unspoken is integrity. When integrity is not first and foremost, it's quite palpable but not visible. It's always there. Jazz highlights it because musicians and jazz always represented a high level of integrity.

I find that jazz loosens up the deep place of my mind, lets me find my own strange rhythms. Generally, I find the knottier the jazz, the better. Anything with singing is a distraction. Listening to classical music tends to have the unconscious effect of making my writing too smooth.

The French - they like jazz, theyve been on jazz a long time.

Jazz is a big thing with me. It's a very big passion of mine, to play it. I'm an amateur musician and I love everything about it. I was obsessed with jazz when I was 15 years old and I know a lot about it because I've loved it so much.

I think we're an inspiration to young people, to know they can be honest and not run away from influences that are not jazz. We're definitely breeding a new wave of jazz, for real.

Shook is the musical universe I created. I come from a classical and jazz background and my father is a jazz pianist, so my world bears largely the marks of this influence. As a sort of gateway, I started composing my own music on the computer at the age of 13. Before Shook, I had not yet discovered the kind of music I wanted to dedicate myself to, so I did a little of everything.

If I'm not a jazz player all the time, I've at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.

I couldn't get my album played over the so-called smooth jazz stations. Jazz stations would not play it. You don't always know who you're making that soul connection with.

Improvisation in the jazz sense - like the business sense - is not formless. It is built on a skill set. Jazz, for example, involves selecting a tune.

The jazz guitarist Peter Sprague calls his home recording studio SpragueLand, but sometimes it seems that the moniker better captures the way he has turned the entire southland into his own musical playground. Sprague is a highly versatile musician who draws on the wellsprings of jazz and Brazilian music as primary influences.

One of the most obvious aspects of the music to people who know jazz is: How does it feel in the swing? These are things that are very subtle and that jazz musician appreciate in a particular way. I appreciate the way Tommy Flanagan swings, the way that Barry Harris swings, the great pulse that Hank Jones and Bill Evans have - end every one of them is different.

Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it.

I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and am a product of a family that were jazz aficionados and also very interested in progressive politics. And so I had a lot of artists and musicians in my home. Lots of Latin music, folk, and jazz and blues, bluegrass-type of stuff. Painters and stuff like that.

Jazz vision for me is seeing my art in musical term. It offers me an visual expressions in an ever-changing musical palette.

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

Black people invented jazz. But this story [in La La Land] wasn't ever claiming to be that. It's just a story about two people from one writer's point of view.

I feel that I have an obligation to jazz and also to myself to play as good as I can play.

I feel like certain people think that certain styles of music will taint their jazz style.

My songs were influenced not so much by poetry on the page but by poetry being recited by the poets who recited poems with jazz bands.

The wonderful thing about Jazz is its willingness to take chances.

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

Visually I've always liked the 20s 30s for film. I do these because I like the music. I like the clothes. I like the way the women and the guys look. There are soldiers and sailors and gangsters with the machine guns in their violin cases. It's a very colorful era of New York, full of great theater and great nightclubs and great jazz.

I understood jazz, I understood how it worked. That's what I apply to everything.

I love pop music. It's not easy to write a good pop song. It may be easier to put out a fake jazz album, as Sting does from time to time.

D.C. is a great place. The music, jazz, has always been great here, the restaurants have always been fantastic here. And there's been a lot of changes in this city over the last 30 years, and all for the better.

Everybody in Germany was for the -German cause. But then, after the war ended, when I heard the first Glenn Miller sound on the radio and these fantastic American music makers, I turned into a jazz fanatic. They called me Benny, after Benny Goodman. So, all of a sudden, the eyes of young Germans were opened to America - everything American was absolutely at the top of the list.

I'm definitely not a laptop/midi/abelton guy. But there is a lot of music I like. I really like Bach organ music. I really like Chopin piano music. I really like Wendy Carlo's electronic music. I really like Miles Davis and John Mclaughlin jazz style. So I'm not only an old-school rocker, but I have to admit that I'm going to be listening to The Doors, Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop, David Bowie and Bob Dylan many times a week.

If you play jazz, then you play with your fingers. If you're playing rock, you use a pick. There's really no rhyme or reason to that other than that's just the way it has been.

I started singing Folksongs with my mother when I was 6 years old. We sang at Folk festivals and concerts and schools. There was always music being played either on record, Jazz and Folk, by musician friends of my mother. I took to singing very early, I believe it has been a Gift I was born with.

In this country, particularly, actually in times that are difficult, or from corners of America where you least expect it, unbelievable pure creativity has welled up. Generally because of the cross-fertilization... a Scott Joplin tune becomes jazz, becomes blues, and becomes rock 'n' roll.

Many people forget that Jazz, no matter what form it takes, must come from the heart as well as the mind.

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 of my life as divided between a lot of different periods. I grew up in the country, but as I got older I became more of an urban person. That's really when I started to become more of a creative person who was interested in fine arts, painting, drawing, and music. I studied jazz for a long time. Looking back, all those things were great training.

It's hard to explain what happens when jazz and punk fuse with a violin twist but it works. Probably because Anson Choi takes off his shirt while he's playing the saxophone. Whoever's not chatting up a Cadet or a girl from Darling House or playing chess with the guys is watching the band. I turn into a groupie.

People behind the Iron curtain have such an incredible image of America and jazz. I expected to find a Gerry Mulligan or Miles Davis on every corner...I almost expected a Shorty Rogers to deliver the milk, a Bud Shank to be the mailman.

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

The jazz chord substitutions in a country song... that was another thing that bent people's ears. I guess that my favorites are the unique ones. It's not how fast you play. It's that unique blending of different stuff I'm most proud of.

Jazz stands for freedom.

After I exhausted the blues thing, I got into jazz.

I fear that I won't get better and that I won't have time to practice. To be called a "jazz musician" - it's a big responsibility.

A short story relies on those values that make poetry and jazz what they are: tension, rhythms, inner beat, into unforeseen within foreseen parameters

I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture.

Jazz, rock and roll, movies and comics are the culture of America.