Jazz  Quotes

• Abraham Maslow - "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write to ultimately be at peace with himself."
• Henri Matisse - "Jazz is rhythm and meaning."
• Henri Matisse - "There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience."
• Dave Matthews - "Good music is good music & everything else can go to hell."
• John Mayall - "Once you start collecting records you learn more & more about Jazz & Blues."
• Susannah McCorkle - "People will always need love, romance, a tender touch & really personal & deeply felt music."
• Bobby McFerrin - "I have a lot of albums yet to do."
• Bobby McFerrin - "The true musician is to bring light into people's hearts."
• Bobby McFerrin - "I use the audience as my color palette, my instrument."
• John McLaughlin - "Music is born out of the inner sounds within a soul."
• John McLaughlin - "All the music that was ever heard came from the inner silence in every musician."
• John McLaughlin - "It's not what you do, but the way you're doing it and in the end that's all that we have."
• John McLaughlin - "You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and be yawning your head off."
• John McLaughlin - "Indian music is very soulful & the only other school that develops improv to the high degree you find in Jazz."
• John McNiel - "If a player is pushing their ability, a certain amount of failure is inevitable. Maybe even desirable."
• Brian McKnight - "Jazz is about improvisation & the moment in time, doing it this way now & you'll never do it this way twice."
• Marian McPartland - "There are a million good tunes."
• Marian McPartland - "Mary Lou Williams used to tell me: If you're not feeling right, play a minor tune & it falls into place."
• Carmen McRae - Blues is to Jazz what yeast is to bread; without it, it's flat."
• Jay McShann - "They said Bird played bebop, but Bird could still swing. I've heard a lot of guys play bebop, but they wasn't swinging."
• Johnny Mercer - "Make it one for my baby & one more for the road."
• Johnny Mercer - "Skylark Have you anything to say to me? Won't you tell me where my love can be?
• Johnny Mercer - "An early autumn walks the land & chills the breeze & touches with her hand the summer trees."
• Johnny Mercer - "We're drinking my friend to the end of a brief episode. Make it one for my baby & one more for the road."
• Johnny Mercer - "She's nobody's fool so I'm playing it cool as can be. I'll give it a whirl but I ain't for no girl catching me."
• Johnny Mercer - "Icy fingers up & down my spine, the same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine."
• Johnny Mercer - "Day in, day out. That same old voodoo follows me about."
• Johnny Mercer - "Days of wine & roses laugh & run away, like a child at play."
• Johnny Mercer - "You must have been a beautiful baby, 'Cos baby just look at you now."
• Brad Mehldau - "Romanticism implies nostalgia for damaged goods."
• Pat Metheny - "Listening is the key to everything good in music."
• Pat Metheny - "My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener."
• Pat Metheny - "The beauty of Jazz is that it's malleable. People address it to suit their own personalities."
• Pat Metheny - "I don't worry too much about the fundamentalist principles that are in almost any discussion about Jazz."
• Pat Metheny - "Jazz demands that you bring to it things that are valuable to you, that are personal to you."
• Pat Metheny - "Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that."
• Pat Metheny - "People sometimes say it takes a long time to become a Jazz fan, but for me it took about five seconds."
• Glenn Miller - "I haven't a great Jazz band and I don't want one."
• Henry Miller - "An artist is always alone if he is an artist. What the artist needs is loneliness."
• Charles Mingus - "I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer."
• Charles Mingus - "Jazz music is a language of the emotions."
• Charles Mingus - "They're singing your praises while stealing your phrases."
• Charles Mingus - "Let my children have music! Let them hear live music."
• Charles Mingus - "Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple."
• Charles Mingus - "I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time."
• Charles Mingus - "Just because I'm playing Jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through Jazz."
• Charles Mingus - "Good Jazz is when the leader jumps on the piano, waves his arms & yells. Fine Jazz is when a tenorman lifts his foot in the air. Great Jazz is when he heaves a piercing note for 32 bars & collapses on his hands & knees. A pure genius of Jazz is manifested when he & the rest of the orchestra runaround the room while the rhythm section grimaces & dances around their instruments."
• Thelonious Monk - "I find my inspiration in myself."
• Thelonious Monk - "After two takes you're imitating yourself."
• Thelonious Monk - "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."
• Thelonious Monk - "I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself."
• Thelonious Monk - "I don't have a definition of Jazz. You're just supposed to know it when you hear it."
• Thelonious Monk - "I don't consider myself a musician who has achieved perfection & can't develop any further."
• Thelonious Monk - "I don't know where Jazz is going. Maybe it's going to hell. You can't make anything go anywhere. It just happens."
• Thelonious Monk - "I like to sleep. There is no set time of day for sleep. You sleep when you're tired & that's all there is to it."
• Thelonious Monk - "Play what you want & let the public pick up on what you doing even if it does take them 15, 20 years."
• T.S. Monk - "A Jazz musician is supposed to find his voice, find his niche & do his thing."
• Wes Montgomery - "When I got pretty good I went on the road with a group. We starved."
• Wes Montgomery - "I never practice my guitar. From time to time I just open the case & throw in a piece of raw meat."
• Lee Morgan - "There are no natural barriers. It's all music. It's either hip or it ain't."
• Van Morrison - "The point of Jazz is, you do something and then you go on."