Popular quotes about Jazz! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
I have always loved jazz music and as a teen growing up in New York City and then later on as an adult have great memories of the jazz clubs that were all located on 52nd Street. I still catch as many jazz shows as I can when I am in New York. And when I perform, I have my jazz quartet by my side. Jazz musicians keep things spontaneous and very "live," which is the way I like to perform.
Tony BennettI haven't got a great jazz band and I don't want one. Some of the critics, Down Beat's among them, point their fingers at us and charge us with forsaking real jazz . . . It's all in what you define as 'real jazz.' It happens that to our ears harmony comes first. A dozen colored bands have a better beat than mine. Our band stresses harmony.
Glenn MillerI've always felt that most jazz artists don't need producers .. most jazz artists know what kind of sound they want. They don't need a producer to come in there and tell them, "Oh, I think you should do this." I've always found it very strange that there's been such a thing as producers in jazz.
Christian McBrideJazz is a music that really allows a person to express his deepest self, his most personal self - Africa being the primary source of jazz. Naturally, improvisation and swing are a part of jazz, improvisation being the key.
Harold LandThe Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame will provide a center where the lives and the artistry of the greatest jazz musicians will be celebrated, and where people will come to learn about jazz, something to which my brother devoted his lifes work.
Ahmet ErtegunJazz was always cool. That was what I liked about jazz - it was always cool. Now I see the cats that were basically cool getting kind of uncool. So that ruins what I feel about jazz.
Van MorrisonAnd what gift of America to the rest of the world is actually most appreciated by the rest of the world? It is African American jazz and its offshoots. What is my definition of jazz? Safe sex of the highest order.
Kurt VonnegutI've played drums since I was 15. My sisters and I all played instruments. I kind of started with piano and then I actually played saxophone with a jazz band in middle school. So, any knowledge I had of jazz music was from playing alto-sax back then.
Miles TellerThere are great jazz educators that I meet all the time. I met a guy named Paul Luchessi who has a high school jazz program in Fresno. And Bob Athayde who runs a junior high program in Lafayette, California. And man, we walked into these schools and Paul Luchessi said, "Jon is the composer of Paradox." A hundred or something kids started to applaud. "What? You guys know that? I'm so blown away.
Jon GordonI 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.
Paul LynchJazz 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.
Henry ManciniIntrovert conversations are like jazz, where each player gets to solo for a nice stretch before the other player comes in and does his solo. And like jazz, once we get going, we can play all night. Extrovert conversations are more like tennis matches, where thoughts are batted back and forth, and players need to be ready to respond. Introverts get winded pretty quickly.
Laurie HelgoeDuke 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.
Dave BrubeckMusic was not a big deal to me when I was in middle school. And then I slowly became a big jazz fan. Even more than concerts, a lot of my high school time was spent going to jazz clubs in the city.
Nick KrollWhen I was nine years old, I started playing guitar, and I took classical guitar lessons and studied music theory. And played jazz for a while. And then when I was around fourteen years old, I discovered punk rock. And so I then tried to unlearn everything I had learned in classical music and jazz so I could play in punk rock bands.
MobyIt is Jazz's very nature to change, to develop & adapt to the circumstances of its environment.
Pat MethenyIt (jazz) isn't like it used to be. The guys aren't together. They're all separated. Individuals now. Bird was a symbol. It was a clique, a clique of people. Who all believed in one thing: gettin' high. And playin'.
Charles MingusI feel that I have an obligation to jazz and also to myself to play as good as I can play.
Sonny RollinsThe history of all big jazz bands shows was, first they played for dancing, and then they played for singing.
Norman GranzEverybody 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.
Luigi ColaniNow we also need people who just love to listen to the music. And we need people that want to work to facilitate it. That want to do work, have somebody like Bret Primack, the jazz video guy.
Jon GordonCultures have long heard wisdom in non-human voices: Apollo, god of music, medicine and knowledge, came to Delphi in the form of a dolphin. But dolphins, which fill the oceans with blipping and chirping, and whales, which mew and caw in ultramarine jazz - a true rhapsody in blue - are hunted to the edge of silence.
Jay GriffithsI guess my biggest influence was actually my Grandfather. He used to play old records on vinyl, and would play old jazz and soul music like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and The Rat Pack and swing music.
Ella HendersonI did everything I could to not bring in any of the - any of the technical things I got from classical into jazz. And I did everything to really base it on my speaking voice and to just not try to make it sound pretty.
Cecile McLorin SalvantAs 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.
Charlie HadenI 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.
Reed KrakoffNormal adults can doodle, amble, and drift with no need to assess risk, since there is normally no risk at all. Jazz improvisation seems less subject to standards of risk than surgery, and less than much formal athletic performance, as in a tennis match.
Ernest SosaPain can be washed out with a song. / Pain can become jazz digested and transformed.
Alexis De VeauxThe only things that the United States has given to the world are skyscrapers, jazz, and cocktails. That is all. And in Cuba, in our America, they make much better cocktails.
Federico Garcia LorcaThe music I like best is kind of frozen in my mind from the Sixties and Seventies. I still listen to the same jazz music I listened to when I was eighteen years old, and like and admire it just as much.
Don DeLilloDon'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.
John LennonThe whole world loves American movies, blue jeans, jazz and rock and roll. It is probably a better way to get to know our country than by what politicians or airline commercials represent.
Billy JoelI'm always doubting because I've been told so much that, you're not the right look or you're not the right sound, and, you know, whether I do jazz or R&B there are always complaints.
LedisiI think there are dozens or hundreds of different forms of creativity. Pondering science and math problems for years is different from improvising jazz. Something which seems to me remarkable is how unconscious the creative process is. You encounter a problem, but can't solve it.
Oliver SacksA short story relies on those values that make poetry and jazz what they are: tension, rhythms, inner beat, into unforeseen within foreseen parameters
Julio CortazarI think when I feel I'm at my best is when I'm on stage, and it's my version of jazz because it's just riffing or something.
Billy CrystalIf it wasn't for hustlers, gangsters & gamblers there'd be no Jazz. Wasn't middle~class who said Let's go hear Bird tonight.
Betty CarterI like contemporary American literature and I like biographies and I like jazz and I like baseball and I like writers who write about the human condition and sci-fi is just something that I happened into.
Jonathan Frakes