Jazz Quotes

Excerpted from Basic Musicianship

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Diana Krall - "I'm not really on a mission to tell anybody anything. I'd rather be figured out."
Diana Krall - "What we do as artists is a combination of experience & imagination. How that creeps into your work is not so linear."
Diana Krall - "I've sung a lot of emotional songs, but when you're writing it's very difficult to decide what to reveal."
Diana Krall - "I work very hard at being the best musician I can be because I love it." [P]
Diana Krall - "You want the listener to find the song on their own, give too much away & it takes away from the imagination." [P]
Diana Krall - "The greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out."
Diana Krall - "Love songs last because they are about feelings that don't change." [P]

Paul Kreibich - "Jazz music is the real deal." [P]
Paul Kreibich - "Jazz music is our original American culture."
Paul Kreibich - "Jazz standards are our contribution to music history."
Paul Kreibich - "There's a spiritual satisfaction that one gets from listening & playing good Jazz." [P]
Paul Kreibich - "People who like Jazz feel the depth & soul & intelligence that the music expresses."
Paul Kreibich - "Jazz is not to be sliced into bites by mass marketing geniuses who assume we are mindless cattle."
Paul Kreibich - "The expression of freedom that is Jazz improvisation mirrors the ethos of the best parts of society."
Paul Kreibich - "Apparently Jazz is now considered high art & the average person has trouble understanding it."
Gene Krupa - "I'll never play a drum solo you can't dance to." [P]
Steve Kuhn - "It's about getting the sound to flow from your body and allowing that sound to get to the piano." [P]

Steve Lacy - "Risk is at the heart of Jazz. Every note we play is a risk." [P]
Steve Lacy - "You have to sound sad first, then maybe later you can sound good." [P]
Steve Lacy - "I started in New Orleans music & played all through the history of Jazz."
Steve Lacy - "I fell in love with Jazz when I was 12 listening to Duke Ellington & hearing a lot of Jazz in New York on the radio."
Steve Lacy - "I still love the whole history of Jazz. The old things sound better than ever."
Steve Lacy - "People don't want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately & this is one of the biggest problems." [P]
Steve Lacy - "There's a lot of recreational Jazz going on, where cats learn a particular style & become sharks on somebody else's language."
Steve Lacy - "A Jazz musician is a combination entertainer, poet, singer, educator, student, artist, seducer & all-round good fellow." [P]
Steve Lacy - "Jazz is like wine. When it is new it's only for the experts, but when it gets older everybody wants it."
Steve Lacy - "In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds." [P]
Scott LaFaro - "I have a deep respect for harmony, melodic patterns and form." [P]
Scott LaFaro - "I don't like to look back because the whole point in Jazz is doing it now." [P]
Oliver Lake - "Improvisation is in the moment and the audience is there with you when you go on your journey." [P]
Dave Lambert - "I've always had a deep love of live performance, it's when I feel most alive." [P]
Harold Land - "Jazz is a music that allows a person to express his deepest, most personal self." [P]
J. D. Landis - "Talent is no excuse for not practicing."

Yusef Lateef - "My music is Jazz." [P]
Yusef Lateef - "External instruments are only extensions of the biological instrument."
Hubert Laws - "When you listen to someone improvise, the notes that are played are only half the story." [P]
Peggy Lee - "What are you going to do when you love music? You can't stop." [P]
Peggy Lee - "I regard singing pretty much like acting. Each song is like playing a different role. I get very involved with my material. I feel a responsibility for the emotion it brings out in the listener."

Michel Legrand - "To play piano is a significant part of my life, my existence. It fulfills a very physical & spiritual need for me." [P]
John Lennon - "The more real you get, the more unreal everything else is." [P]
John Lennon - "Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it."
Annie Lennox - "When you're successful, things have a momentum & you can't tell if you have created the momentum or it's creating you." [P]
Annie Lennox - "Music is an extraordinary vehicle for expressing very powerful emotions. That's what draws people towards it."
Mark Levine - "Practice and listen." [P]
Mark Levine - "Get a good teacher."
Mark Levine - "Transcribe off records. Learn from the masters directly."
George Lewis - "I am inclined to just write music and not worry about what people can or can't do." [P]
John Lewis - "The reward for playing Jazz is playing Jazz." [P]
Ramsey Lewis - "I never set out to find a style of my own, it just happened." [P]
Dave Liebman -"There is nothing new... everything has roots in the past." [P]
Dave Liebman - "Art is constant tension & release. That is where artists live, between the two or at times, submerged in either." [P]
Dave Liebman - "A Jazz performance centers upon the process of creation. The final objective is not only the finished product, but the path & process taken towards it."
Abbey Lincoln - "I loved Billie Holiday more than any other person other than myself on the stage."
Abbey Lincoln - "I don't have to lay on the couch & see a therapist because my therapy is in art." [P]
Abbey Lincoln - "The best thing you can do is to be a woman & stand before the world & speak your heart." [P]
Alfred Lion - '"Any particular style of playing which represents an authentic way of musical feeling is genuine expression."
Booker Little - "Jazz stresses less on technical exhibitionism & much more on emotional content."
Humphrey Lyttelton -"It is this tendency to play with manic enthusiasm on every possible occasion that distinguishes the amateur Jazz musician from the professional." [P]
Didier Lockwood - "Live music is the greatest of your wealth, enjoy every moment, go forward and progress." [P]
Joe Lovano - "Jazz without the Blues is like BBQ without the sauce." [P]
Joe Lovano - "You explore beautiful songs & create your own interpretation of them."
Joe Lovano - "I play in a flowing approach; really try to draw on where I've been, the people I've played with." [P]
Mundell Lowe - "I choose chords and notes based on what I feel in my gut, without worrying about convention." [P]
Carol Lloyd - "Inspiration grows into full-scale creation through persistence and imagination."
Charles Lloyd - "Each time I have the opportunity to play, it's another chance to tell the truth." [P]
Paco De Lucia - "I didn't study music. I literally lived it."
Paco De Lucia - "If you lack technique you lose the freedom to create."
Paco De Lucia - "The hands find a way to do what the heart wants to say." [P]
Brian Lynch - "I think that it is important to try to sound like someone, especially early in your development." [P]
Bob Magnusson - "If you don't develop a love and feel for the instrument, it's not worth the pain and effort." [P]
Kevin Mahogany - "I believe that all creative people have more than one passion, more than one creative talent." [P]
Russell Malone - "When you have trust, you don't have to try to make something happen." [P]
Chuck Mangione - "I don't believe music can be free unless it has something to be free from."
Chuck Mangione - "I can count on one hand the number of instrumental hits there have been over the last 10 years."
Chuck Mangione - "I don't put labels or categories on music because people come with preconceived ideas about what they'll hear." [P]
Herbie Mann - "You don't have to live the blues to play the blues."
Herbie Mann - "Music allows the great opportunity to play with people you love."
Herbie Mann - "If you want to play somebody's music, you'd better go into his house." [P]
Herbie Mann - "If you keep your head in the sand, you don't know where the kick's coming from."

Shelly Manne - "We never play anything the same way once." [P]
Kitty Margolis - "You have to be an improviser to be a Jazz singer. I don't think you have to scat, but time feel is really important." [P]
Ellis Marsalis - "At a time when individualism is becoming an endangered species, Jazz represents a celebration of the individual." [P]
Branford Marsalis - "We all played bad before we played good." [P]
Branford Marsalis - "Jazz is so incestuous that it's starting to kill itself."
Branford Marsalis - "My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me."
Branford Marsalis - "So much of Jazz doesn't have an audience other than music students or musicians."
Branford Marsalis - "Jazz fans love Miles & I love him for a myriad of reasons, but the overviews are always too simplistic."
Branford Marsalis - "Pop doesn't really look back. It can't. What makes pop work is simplicity."
Branford Marsalis - "You don't know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything."
Branford Marsalis - "We quest for the perfect performance & every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life."

Wynton Marsalis - "Don't bullshit, just play." [P]
Wynton Marsalis - "Jazz music is the power of now."
Wynton Marsalis - "A beat is a moment in the life a groove."
Wynton Marsalis - "Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance." [P]
Wynton Marsalis - "I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel."
Wynton Marsalis - "Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz."
Wynton Marsalis - "Find the best teachers, listen to the finest playing & try to emulate that. Be true to the music."
Wynton Marsalis - "Jazz isn't the kind of music you're going to learn in 3 or 4 years or get because you have talent for music."
Wynton Marsalis - "Music does not come to you. You have to come to it & you'll walk away with something you didn't have before."
Wynton Marsalis - "In Jazz, improvisation isn't a matter of just making any ol' thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and vocabulary. There's no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others."
Pat Martino - "Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now." [P]
Pat Martino - "I've always depended upon my own melodic instinct, instead of scale like formulas." [P]
Hugh Masekela - "Miles told me not to use vibrato because when you get old, you're going to shake anyway." [P]

More Jazz quotes & quotations:

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