Quotes About Jazz

The Schnauzer listens to jazz. I listen to jazz because he likes it, and I have even gone to jazz concerts with him, but truthfully I would rather listen to retarded children pounding on pan lids with wooden spoons.

When I hear the words jazz pianist, that just means I have the skills to do most things. Because to be a jazz pianist, even to be a bad jazz pianist, you have to be pretty good.

What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.

Just figure out what you think jazz is, and then if it fits into that category, it's jazz, and if it doesn't, it isn't. It's no big deal.

There was a time, from 1935-1946, when teenagers and young adults danced to jazz-orientated bands. When jazz orchestras dominated pop charts and when influential clarinettists were household names. This was the swing era.

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 have a fondness for jazz, particularly for jazz singers, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald all the way through the Sinatra era.

[Manhattan School Of Music] didn't' have a jazz undergraduate program at the time so I played a semester in the big band. There was a graduate program. But I wasn't really that involved in jazz yet.

If I knew what it was going to look like, I wouldnt be so excited to be a part of it. Jazz is a music of surprise; its a music of spontaneity. I think jazz musicians live--I know I do--for being surprised and not knowing whats going to come next.

In Jazz, improvisation isn't a matter of just making any ol' thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and vocabulary. There's no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others.

I was in school for jazz voice, which is the dumbest way to spend $35,000 a year. I just felt like a rip-off of good jazz singers. I didn't feel like I was being anything special, and I always wanted to be special. It's like you know you have something inside you that's gonna make you different than everybody else and make you somebody in this life, but you wish you could figure out what it is, because at most things, you're either mediocre or really, really bad.

This is a tradition of resistance to the term that's as old as the term itself, especially because that term has been used to commodify and reduce black creativity, and also to appropriate and sell it. That's what John Coltrane said in an interview with a Japanese journalist: "Jazz is a word they use to sell our music, but to me that word does not exist." And he's treated as one of the central figures in the history of jazz. So if he rejected it, then why is it weird when I do it? I'm in the tradition!

Jazz isn't dead yet. It's the underpinning of everything in this country. Whether it's a Broadway show, or fusion, or right on through classical music, if it's coming out of the U.S., it's not going to survive unless it's got some jazz influence.

Jazz is capable of doing much more than depicting the dope fiend and the drunk and the slinky gal. In our show there are many very funny sequences where we were able to use jazz as it can be used-in a happy way.

Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, and many other great jazz musicians objected to their music being called jazz. While the outside world may want to put a label on it, those who create it think of it just as music, and tend not to classify it.

Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.

Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz.

Now, the instrumentation in the jazz band and the jazz dance band has gone through many evolutions. For instance, in the 'twenties the tradition was two or three saxophones

From it's inception Beat poetry was hailed as "something NEW" and "like all good spontaneous jazz, newness is acceptable and expected - by hip people who listen." But the newness of jazz has in it the echoes of J. S. Bach.

I don't listen to a lot of music when I have my free time. But I'll go to a jazz club and have a drink and listen to a good jazz musician. Or sometimes in the morning, if I want to put myself in a good mood, I'll put on some Latin music.

I've been dancing my entire life. Jazz, hip hop, ballet. And then there's tap dancing. I love to tap.

It is Jazz's very nature to change, to develop & adapt to the circumstances of its environment.

Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music!

I listen to Neil Young and jazz and classical stations and, if my girlfriend's driving, it tends to be Hall & Oates.

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.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

Through improvisation, jazz teaches you about yourself. And through swing, it teaches you that other people are individuals too. It teaches you how to coordinate with them.

I enjoy playing clubs. I still enjoy the closeness of the nightclub venue. However, after a certain period of time and after playing around some of the clubs in New YorkI felt that jazz should be presented in a more prestigious atmosphere.

I kind of grew up a guitar nerd and I tried to figure out how to shred on an acoustic guitar as a kid, while listening to jazz or whatever. So that is kind of a different thing and my church background, growing up with worship kind of the ground that I learned how to play music from. Those are all odd ways of growing up, compared to most people, so I think the music has plenty of uniqueness in that.

In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it's a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don't listen.

I'm always looking for ways to develop as a Jazz artist, to find different ways of using my voice.

Blues is like the roux in a gumbo. People ask me if jazz always has the blues in it. I say, if it sounds good it does.

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

I have I guess 3 passions. One is the Constitution. The other is jazz and the other is being an atheist prolifer which, of course, gets me in a lot of trouble - all of which combines into free expression.

I love music. My secret dream has always been to be a jazz musician. I tried the saxophone for a year or two when I was younger, but unfortunately I had to face the fact that I was not really talented !

I knew what real instruments I wanted and, in some cases, who I wanted to play them. I had started listening to a lot of ambient music and jazz and I wanted to incorporate stuff like that, too.

We went to see all the shows. American musical theater and jazz were very big.

I do after-school ballet and also hip-hop and jazz.

That's the thing about jazz: it's free flowing, it comes from your soul.

My roots and Victor's are jazz, basically, but these two young fellows that we have with us come out of rock bands. And they're tremendously exciting players.

Blues and soul and jazz music has so much pain, so much beauty of raw emotion and passion.

I believe in dressing for the occasion. There's a time for sweater, sneakers and Levis and a time for the full-dress jazz.

[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.

One of the things I'm going to say out there is how grateful I am - and how grateful the world is - for the tremendous gift of the black people, of jazz.

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.

Mars is really different, into art. Lydia Lunch is more energy. James Chance is more commercial in a different way, in funk and jazz. They were all doing original things, trying to create their own sound and music. I think they're all great.

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

You need better technique than I have to play jazz, but what you have to do is the same thing, isn't it?