Dave Brubeck Quotes

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  • Jazz Pianist
  • 1920 - 2012
  • 68 quotes

Dave Brubeck, Jazz Pianist (1920 - 2012), is quoted 68 times on QuoteForever. The subjects that come up most often are Jazz, Play, Hate and Discipline.

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Jazz stands for freedom.

You have to be taught to hate.

Jazz is about freedom within discipline.

The secret of a great melody is a secret.

When things are going well, I hate to quit.

It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

Concord, California was a great place to grow up.

We don't know the power that's within our own bodies

I had the first integrated Army band in World War II.

We don't know the power that's within our own bodies.

I never wanted this kind of life that Im still living.

I prefer no one to teach me. I prefer to swing on my own.

Don't be a perfectionist... leave that to the classical musicians.

Kinship doesn't come from skin color. It's in your soul and your mind.

I knew even if I'm a cowboy, I'm going to be involved in jazz in some way.

Damn it, when I'm bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic-take it or leave it.

Your mother’s heartbeat is the first sound you ever hear and your own heartbeat is the last.

I'm always hoping for the nights that are inspired where you almost have an out of body experience

I'm always hoping for the nights that are inspired where you almost have an out of body experience.

Every individual should be expressing themselves, whether a politician or a minister or a policeman.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

My own Brubeck Institute in California is turning out fantastic young jazz players, and I know great things will happen.

The first choral music I remember hearing was Handel's 'Messiah' when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcast it over the radio.

You could play probably a span of 50 years of me playing St. Louis Blues, and most of the time it will be different every time.

Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact.

The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous.

When I was first aware that I couldn't read music I didn't know I couldn't read because I could play the music that was in front of me.

I wanted to be like my father, who was a cattle man and a rodeo roper. And that was - he was my hero, and I wanted to be more like him.

I’m beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.

If I told you all the people that have secretly told me I've influenced them, you'd never believe it, and you'll never see it in print, either.

When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection. Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I can hear that in their music.

I don't think you can separate a person's "style" and his persona. If you're writing or improvising honestly, you will inevitably reflect who you are.

Probably the most profound thing in the Bible is 'Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.' This is what, to me, is the essence of Christianity.

I used to take my mother to Yosemite. When I turned 14, I got my driver's license, and that's where she'd want to go, so I'd go take her there for two weeks.

My mother Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck was a pianist who studied with Dame Myra Hess and Tobias Matthey. As a child in California I used to listen to her play Chopin.

Most of the international acceptance of jazz education can be traced to the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, and the wonderful program they inaugurated.

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 knew I wanted to write on religious themes when I was a GI in World War II. I saw and experienced so much violence that I thought I could express my outrage best with music.

If there's a deadline, I work late. If not, I like to have normal hours, and get up early and work. When things are going well, I hate to quit. And then I'll work 'till exhausted.

That's the beauty of music. You can take a theme from a Bach sacred chorale and improvise. It doesn't make any difference where the theme comes from; the treatment of it can be jazz.

Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

I played a lot of sports and it's the plays in basketball that weren't worked out that are the ones that are just fantastic that you remember. We don't know the power that's within our own bodies.

And there is a time where you can be beyond yourself. You can be better than your technique. You can be better than most of your usual ideas. And this is a whole other category that you can get into.

It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me. And also it's to me the greatest instrument. I shouldn't say that, but I believe that this is the only instrument I can really feel happy about playing.

I have more energy at the end than I do at the beginning. You can be so beat up that you can scarcely walk on stage but when you get to the piano the excitement kicks in, you forget about being tired.

When I was 20, Shostakovich was my favorite composer. I still find his Fifth Symphony wonderful, with its outstanding themes and rhythms. That's the piece that made me want to be a classical composer.

Jazz is about freedom within discipline. Usually a dictatorship like in Russia and Germany will prevent jazz from being played because it just seemed to represent freedom, democracy and the United States.

Many people don't understand how disciplined you have to be to play jazz... And that is really the idea of democracy - freedom within the Constitution or discipline. You don't just get out there and do anything you want.

I wasn't allowed to play in some universities in the United States and out of twenty-five concerts, twenty-three were canceled unless I would substitute my black bass player for my old white bass player, which I wouldn't do.

When you start out with goals - mine were to play polytonally and polyrhythmically - you never exhaust that. I started doing that in the 1940s. It's still a challenge to discover what can be done with just those two elements.

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