Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Any time you play your horn, it helps you. If you get down, you can help yourself even in a rock 'n' roll band.
There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. they are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence.
Kenny G, I have to be grateful to him for proving that the instrument can be played all different kinds of ways.
When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly.
There are colors we can't see, but they're connected to the ones we can, There's a connection between everything.
You don't know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything.
I had to agonize over my selection since our music is so rich and all the above plus many others have contributed.
I think music is an instrument. It can create the initial thought patterns that can change the thinking of people.
I'm learning more about life when I'm playing too, and writing music. I'm learning more about life, the connection.
It's important to let each artist do what makes him or her feel comfortable. Success should be a by-product of that.
For an individual fully to play himself, rather than to sound like someone else, is possibly the hardest thing to do.
I believe that men are here to grow themselves into best good that they can be - at least, this is what I want to do.
I think music is an instrument. It can create the initial thought patterns that can change the thinking of the people.
When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now.
If you're trying to invent something new, you're going to reach a lot of discouraging points, and most people give up.
I believe in everyone staying as they are, and when you meld together, you get something more accurate and democratic.
I'd like to point out to people the divine in a musical language that transcends words. I want to speak to their souls.
People don't want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately, and this is one of the biggest problems in the world.
Only America makes you feel that everybody wants to be like you. That's what success is: Everybody wants to be like you.
In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.
What I learned with Cecil Taylor was strategy and survival and how to resist temptations and resist getting discouraged.
I believe that men are here to grow themselves into the best good that they can be - at least, this is what I want to do.
As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.
All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.
You can read all the textbooks and listen to all the records, but you have to play with musicians that are better than you.
Barry Manilow is a guy who's had a tremendous longevity that few have had in the music business. I'm in awe of what he does.
It's very important to go through periods where you sound just rotten and you know it, and you have to persevere or give up.
Get up from the piano ... Oscar is in the house. Who wants to be at the piano when Oscar is there? Find something else to do.
I just want a band and keep them working, people that I like and who I think a lot of. Once my band is happy, then I am happy.
The value of jazz still has to be clarified. People involve themselves with its superficialities without digging for its soul.
I came from an era when we didn't use electronic instruments. The bass wasn't even amplified. The sound was the sound you got.
I want to make albums that are like a Murakami novel or a Terrence Malick film - something that explicitly states its own world.
I put quite a bit of study into the horn, that's true. In fact, the neighbors threatened to ask my mother to move once, you know.
Actually, when I was very young, first starting to play, I think I probably listened more to clarinet players than to saxophones.
I find it's only when something is trying to come through I really practice. And then, I don't know how many hours. It's all day.
I've always been extremely lucky in playing with great people who knew much more than I did. That's how I got from there to here.
I know Ornette was playing violin sometimes - that was his bridge into the classical world, to break up that whole pecking order.
Some of my biggest moments have been in jam sessions, but I don't want to talk about them. There were always other people involved.
I consider music to be a service and I am trying to serve the music, the musicians and the audience the best I can at every moment.
I like to make records sound good. I'm more like a reducer than a producer. If an artist cannot produce themselves, what's the point?
I fell in love with jazz when I was 12 years old from listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of jazz in New York on the radio.
When I first started playing music in 1955, there was just a small body of people that knew it. It was a very esoteric type of thing.
The only thing my mother would say to me about my music - I'd say, "Mom, listen to this," and she'd say, "Junior, I know who you are."
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.
You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.
If you have music you want to play that no one asks you to play, you have to go out and find where you can play it. It's called do or die.
A lot of people don't know that Beethoven, when he wrote the Fifth Symphony, that second movement, he took eight years to figure that out!
Maybe the biggest thing that I've learned musically is that anything is possible. Things can work when maybe they don't seem like they can.
I feel like if I do my homework practice-wise, by the time I get to the studio I can put everything exactly where I want it to be right away.
When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hang-ups.