Jazz Quotes

Excerpted from Basic Musicianship

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Carla Bley - "I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out." [P]
Carla Bley - "When you are studying Jazz best thing to do is listen to records & live music as much you can & absorb everything." [P]
Carla Bley - "Listening is more important than anything because that's what music is. Somebody is playing something & you're receiving it."
Mike Bloomfield - "A good player can make any instrument sound good." [P]
Buddy Bolden - "Simmer down, let me hear the sound of them feet." [P]
Richard Bona - "I consider music being a school that never ends." [P]
Chris Botti - "I'm a trumpet player first, a Jazz musician second and I'm an entertainer." [P]
Nadia Boulanger - "Do nothing for effect. Do it for truth." [P]
Nadia Boulanger - "Music can never be more or less than who you are as a human being." [P]
Todd Boyd - "If a Jazz musician plays someone else's song, he has a responsibility to make a distinct & original statement." [P]
JoAnne Brackeen - "For me, there wasn't a line between working and getting paid or simply playing for fun." [P]
Anthony Braxton - "I'm a professional student of music." [P]
Joshua Breakstone - "The ultimate in Jazz is to say something in a unique manner, to say something in your own way." [P]
Joshua Breakstone - "Jazz has always been a music of group improvisation. You can't let your ego go beyond the bounds of being able to play within the group."
Michael Brecker - "In Jazz, the first takes are the best, the freshest and most open." [P]

Bob Brookmeyer - "A Jazz man should be saying what he feels: humor, sadness, joy... all the things that humans have." [P]
Clifford Brown - "It's always a matter of phrasing and taste." [P]
Les Brown - "Help others achieve their dreams and you will achieve yours." [P]
Les Brown - "If you take responsibility for yourself you will develop a hunger to accomplish your dreams."
Ray Brown - "The better it gets, the fewer of us know it." [P]
Ray Brown - "Jazz is something you have to feel, something you have to live." [P]
Ray Brown - "Jazz is a complete lifestyle, something that you feel, something that you live."
Dave Brubeck - "Jazz stands for freedom." [P]
Dave Brubeck - "Don't be a perfectionist... leave that to the classical musicians." [P]
Dave Brubeck - "Kinship doesn't come from skin color. It's in your soul and your mind."
Dave Brubeck - "Get out there & improvise & take chances & don't be a perfectionist." [P]
Dave Brubeck - "You can be beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than most of your usual ideas."
Dave Brubeck - "There is a time where you're beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than your usual ideas."
Dave Brubeck - "There's a way of playing safe & then there's where you create something you haven't created before."
Ray Bryant - "There's always something new to learn. You can hear something you didn't hear yesterday." [P]
Khatia Buniatishvili - "Solitude is one of the most important facts for a pianist." [P]

Ken Burns - "By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz." [P]
Ken Burns - "Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America."
Ken Burns - "Jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy & a look into our redemptive future possibilities."
Ken Burns - "The genius of our country is improvisation & Jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts."
Kenny Burrell - "I strive for honesty in playing what I feel." [P]
Kenny Burrell - "My inspiration comes from the message Duke Ellington gave... you are unique, be yourself, put out that thing that is you, then use your work ethic and produce great music." [P]

Gary Burton - "Always keep reaching." [P]
Gary Burton - "Inspiration comes from tunes you play, other musicians and your own imagination." [P]
Gary Burton - "Improvising musicians are musical travelers, voyagers. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape."
Charlie Byrd - "The guitar chose me." [P]
Charlie Byrd - "A person should design the way he makes a living around how he wishes to make a life."
Donald Byrd - "I don't follow what everybody else does." [P]
George Cables - "I play against the chords as well as within them." [P]
Sid Caesar - "Jazz is a beautiful woman whose older brother is a policeman." [P]

John Cage - "I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." [P]
Sammy Cahn - "I don't write songs, songs write me." [P]
Sammy Cahn - "The popular song is America's greatest ambassador." [P]
Joey Calderazzo - "If I feel like doing something, I'll play it on the spot."
Joey Calderazzo - "We've got to go out and be us, just do what we do."
Joey Calderazzo - "I don't care how I feel, how tired I am, how far I traveled. I'll get up there and play." [P]
Ann Hampton Callaway - "I have a sense of the importance of music and how powerful it is to bring people together." [P]
Cab Calloway - "Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club." [P]
Cab Calloway - "My audience was my life. What I did & how I did it was all for my audience."
Cab Calloway - "Jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones." [P]
Frank Capra - "A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something." [P]
George Carlin - "Jazz musicians are the only workers who will put in a full shift for pay & then go somewhere else & continue to work for free." [P]
Hoagy Carmichael - "Never play anything that don't sound right. You might not make any money, but at least you won't get hostile with yourself." [P]
Judy Carmichael - "They don't pay me to play, they pay me to travel." [P]
Dale Carnegie - "The essence of all Art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure." [P]
Terri Lyne Carrington - "Jazz means many things to many people, but it's all about choices." [P]
Terri Lyne Carrington - "Once you have been bitten by the Jazz bug, it is not a choice anymore." [P]
Terri Lyne Carrington - "Our music artistry should not be disconnected from our lives or ourselves." [P]

Terri Lyne Carrington - "Women have not been socialized to play drums. It's not natural for us to hit thing."
Terri Lyne Carrington - "Women bring something different to an instrument if they are respectful of their feminine aesthetic."
Betty Carter - "If it wasn't for hustlers, gangsters & gamblers there'd be no Jazz. Wasn't middle-class who said Let's go hear Bird tonight." [P]
Benny Carter - "I play whatever the hell comes out... that's it." [P]
Benny Carter - "The truth is I never gave it much thought. I just played what I had to play."
Ron Carter - "I am from the planet of elegance." [P]
Ron Carter - "A good bassist determines the direction of any band." [P]
Ron Carter - "I felt a responsibility to present a viable alternative to the popular electric sound."
Ron Carter - "Creativity is not simply a property of exceptional people, but an exceptional property of all people." [P]
Philip Catherine - "I enjoy playing anyplace as long as the sound is good and there's a good balance between the size and the people inside." [P]
Joe Chambers - "In order to complete your cycle, a musician needs to write; document what is going through your mind and where you are harmonically, theoretically, historically." [P]
Maxwell Chandler - "Jazz music is an aural souvenir of mankind's attempt to express the intangible, the heart, the soul, through art."
Bill Charlap - "The Blues contain so much joy & sadness at the same time."
Bill Charlap - "Gershwin was right in his time, at his time. Everybody else was behind." [P]
Ray Charles - "I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great." [P]
Ray Charles - "I do Jazz, Blues, Country & so forth. I do them all like a good utility man."
Ray Charles - "Music to me is like breathing. I don't get tired of breathing, I don't get tired of music." [P]
Ray Charles - "Learning to read music in Braille & play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory."
Don Cherry - "Jazz is an art that makes a person completely naked." [P]
Don Cherry - "When people believe in boundaries, they become part of them." [P]

Buddy Childers - "Enjoy what other people do and learn from them." [P]
Buddy Childers - "If you enjoy it enough you're bound to learn something."
Buddy Childers - "If you get good at what you do, part of getting there is enjoying what other players do."
Billy Childs - "There's a lot of music out there that's passive listening where it tells you what to think."
Billy Childs - "Is the calling in you so strong that you just have to get this message out to everybody? If so, then yes, pursue it." [P]
Pete Christlieb - "They told me to play what I felt. Hey, I'm a Jazz musician, that's what I do." [P]
Sonny Clark - "From our vantage point here on the Pacific, New York seems to have a slightly smug attitude about its position as the cultural center of the Universe. So while the East rests on its provincial attitude, here in the provinces, Jazz men are busy exchanging new ideas, experimenting, and creating fine new music." [P]
Kenny Clarke - "You must be organized within yourself first." [P]
Stanley Clarke - "Bass players are always the intellectual kind, but nobody knows it." [P]

Jay Clayton - "The kind of music I chose to do... It sort of chose me. That's the way it is." [P]
John Cleese - "Nothing will stop you from being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake." [P]
Van Cliburn - "An artist can only be evaluated after he's dead. At the 11th hour he might do something that will eclipse everything else." [P]
Van Cliburn - "If you hold onto the beauty and inspiration and the clarity that is music, you will have an anchor, you will not be too far swayed by what the world is."
Rosemary Clooney - "I'm the only instrument that's got the words, so I've got to be able to get that across." [P]
Jimmy Cobb - "I wanted to play Jazz because I always heard it in the neighborhood." [P]
Aaron Copland - "Is there a meaning to music? Yes. Can you state in so many words what the meaning is? No." [P]
Nat King Cole - "The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it." [P]
Nat King Cole - "For years the trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We starved." [P]
Ornette Coleman - "Music is a verb." [P]
Ornette Coleman - "The idea is more important than the style you're playing in."
Ornette Coleman - "The hidden things, the subconscious that lies in the body & lets you know: You feel this, you play this." [P]
Ornette Coleman - "The human being receives the pleasure from music, not from the argument over what it is."
Ornette Coleman - "Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time." [P]

More Jazz quotes & quotations:

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