Jazz Quotes

Excerpted from Basic Musicianship

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Charlie Parker - "The time is now." [P]
Charlie Parker - "I can play all I know in eight bars." [P]
Charlie Parker -"You've got to learn your instrument." [P]
Charlie Parker - "Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you." [P]
Charlie Parker - "If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." [P]
Charlie Parker - "It's not all smoke and mirrors. Some of it comes from books."
Charlie Parker - "Once I could play what I heard inside me, that's when I was born." [P]
Charlie Parker - "Master your instrument, master the music & then forget all that & just play." [P]
Charlie Parker - "I kept thinking there's bound to be something else? I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn't play it." [P]
Charlie Parker - "They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art." [P]
Charlie Parker - "Music is your experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." [P]
Charlie Parker - "In Kansas City joints ran 9pm-5am. Pay was a $1.25 a night but somebody special like Count Basie could command $1.50."
Horace Parlan - "The stress of being in New York takes a toll on musicians, especially Jazz musicians." [P]
Joe Pass - "Using drugs didn't help me play, all it did was hang me up for 15 years." [P]
Joe Pass - "If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterward." [P]
Jaco Pastorius - "When you play, you play life." [P]
Jaco Pastorius - "I'm not a star. I'm just backing up the cats."
Jaco Pastorius - "A chimpanzee could learn what I do physically, but it goes way beyond that. When you play, you play life."
John Patitucci - "The two things most important for playing any kind of music are your sound and rhythmic feeling." [P]
Les Paul - "We go in there & we work on altering those ideas & in many cases go in different directions." [P]
Les Paul - "I have younger friends who don't work & they aren't doing so well. My secret is to keep going, keep working."
Luciano Pavarotti - "Music making is the most joyful activity possible, the most perfect expression of any emotion." [P]
Enos Payne - "Jazz is a feeling more than anything else."
Nicholas Payton - "Jazz music is haunted by its own hungry ghosts."
Nicholas Payton - "Silence is what makes music sexy. I just move blocks of silence around. The notes are an afterthought." [P]
Ken Peplowski - "Jazz amounts to Blues, your unique sound and the elusive genius of improvisation." [P]
Art Pepper - "You know, I wanted something more than just being thought of as a musician, period." [P]
Charli Persip - "I like to solo, but I like it to be rhythmic and musical. So many drum solos end up being demonstrations of technique." [P]

Oscar Peterson - "I don't do something because I think it'll sell 30 million albums. I couldn't care less if it sells just one." [P]
Oscar Peterson - "Some players get very philosophical & cerebral about Jazz. You don't need any prologues, you just play." [P]
Oscar Peterson - "It's the group sound that's important. You have to know the instruments & how to back them up. That's Jazz."
Oscar Peterson - "I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea."
Michel Petrucciani - "I don't believe in geniuses, I believe in hard work." [P]
Michel Petrucciani - "Sometimes I think someone upstairs saved me from being ordinary." [P]
Michel Petrucciani - "My philosophy is to have a really good time and never to let anything stop me from doing what I want to do." [P]
Madeleine Peyroux - "The wonderful thing about Jazz is its willingness to take chances." [P]
Edith Piaf - "Every damn thing you do in this life, you have to pay for." [P]
Pablo Picasso - "Bad artists imitate, great artists steal." [P]
Pablo Picasso - "The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away." [P]
Pablo Picasso - "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." [P]
Dave Pike - "I saw a vibraphone for the first time and knew immediately I had found my means of expression." [P]
Trudy Pitts - "To me music is a feeling, then after that come all the tools. It's an art form and all art forms are born in your spirit as a feeling." [P]
Bucky Pizzarelli - "I start by turning off all the dials on the amp and turning the volume up ...and that's it!" [P]
John Pizzarelli - "My father made me have respect for these songs, these players and the tradition behind them." [P]
Plato - "Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination & charm & gaiety to life."
Herb Pomeroy - "Jazz is the most fun you can have with your clothes on." [P]
Jean-Luc Ponty - "It makes me very happy to know that what I started will not stop with me." [P]
Cole Porter - "In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now heaven knows, anything goes." [P]
Don Preston - "When I play a concert, my primary goal is to be open to whatever spirit resides in me, in each one of us, to take over and do the playing for me." [P]
Louis Prima - "There's nothing like walking out and watching the people get turned on." [P]
Tito Puente - "If there is no dance, there is not music." [P]
Don Pullen - "All the music you've ever heard in your life is somewhere in your head." [P]
Sun Ra - "There's no limit to the things you can do." [P]
Lou Rawls - "Music is the greatest communication in the world." [P]
Lou Rawls - "Even if people don't understand the language that you're singing in, they still know good music when they hear it."
Ma Rainey - "This be an empty world without the blues." [P]
Ma Rainey - "They hear it come out, but they don't know how it got there. They don't understand that's life's way of talking. You don't sing to feel better. You sing cause that's a way of understanding life." [P]

Dewey Redman - "In my world, the first thing I reach for is the sound." [P]
Joshua Redman - "If everyone liked what I did, I probably wouldn't be playing anything of depth." [P]
Eric Reed - "I wasn't interested in practicing Bach; I was too busy digging Horace Silver!" [P]
Dianne Reeves - "The only way for you to grow and evolve is to keep listening, keep moving forward, keep jumping in and trying to experience" [P]
Dianne Reeves - "Jazz is such a living art form. It happens right in the moment. You weave a story by changing certain elements and components." [P]
Django Reinhardt - "Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection & instrumental precision I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn't have." [P]
Emily Remler - "When I'm playing, I don't know whether I'm a girl, boy, dog, cat or whatever, I'm just playing the music. When I leave the stage is when people remind me that I'm a woman." [P]
Tim Rice - "If you think it, want it, dream it... then it's real. You are what you feel." [P]
Buddy Rich - "You only get better by playing." [P]
Buddy Rich - "A musician starting out today should get a great teacher & learn all there is to know about the instrument."
Buddy Rich - "As far as music school goes, I walked through Berkelee one time."
Buddy Rich - "I never believed in a set routine. It should depend on how you feel, because you play what you feel." [P]
Don Rickles - "When you enter a room you have to kiss Sinatra's ring. I don't mind but it's in his back pocket." [P]
Nelson Riddle - "An orchestra can become as familiar and reliable an instrument as a well-known, well-worn piano." [P]
Lee Ritenour - "Composing your own music is one of the best things to find a road to your own style." [P]
Sam Rivers - "The main thing is you want to emote." [P]
Sam Rivers - "You want the audience to feel what you're doing." [P]

Max Roach - "Jazz music is collective creativity." [P]
Max Roach - "Jazz music grabs you to the point where it never lets you go until the very last breath."
Max Roach - "Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers." [P]
Max Roach - "The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of their instrument." [P]
Max Roach - "Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments & collectively create a thing of beauty."
Howard Roberts - "I've come up with the theory that the music is within. We don't bring it in; it's already there. We have to figure out how to get it out." [P]
Marcus Roberts - "Every few years you pretty much have to rebuild your approach and technique to playing the piano." [P]
Robbie Robertson - "Music should never be harmless." [P]
Red Rodney - "Any Jazz musician has to go through the Bebop era." [P]
Shorty Rogers - "When Bird came on the scene, it was shocking as in the Bible: everything was dark & then there was light."

Sonny Rollins - "Jazz never ends... it just continues." [P]
Sonny Rollins - "I'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not." [P]
Sonny Rollins - "My improvisations are a beguiling mixture of the vertical and the horizontal." [P]
Sonny Rollins - "Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things & still be Jazz."
Sonny Rollins - "Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life." [P]
Sonny Rollins - "One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music."
Sonny Rollins - "Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own."
Sonny Rollins - "I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music."
Wallace Roney - "In this trumpet I hear our icons and the sound of the future." [P]
Renee Rosnes - "Composing is a mindset, a part of who I am." [P]
Annie Ross - "And you know, two heads are better than one." [P]
J. K. Rowling - "Ah music... a magic beyond all we do here!" [P]
Alfredo Rubalcava - "Music doesn't have to hop to be hip, as long as it swings it sings."
Roswell Rudd - "You blow in this end of the trombone and sound comes out the other end and disrupts the cosmos." [P]
Howard Rumsey - "The West Coast style is Jazz without vibrato." [P]
Patrice Rushen - "Music is really a spiritual thing, a connection between your inner self and the projection of that in public." [P]
Jimmy Rushing - "The blues tells a story in itself. It can make you happy or give you a feeling to swing." [P]
Jimmy Rushing - "The blues comes right back to a person's feelings, to his daily activities in life. But rich people don't know nothing about the blues, please believe me."
George Russell - "The reason I write music is that I feel it's a vehicle or channel which leads to your true self, your essence." [P]
Jackie Ryan - "All art inspires me. Life inspires me. The art of life, thus my own art." [P]
Carl Sagan - "We are merely one voice in the grand cosmic fugue." [P]
Joe Sample - "I love to hear the note sing." [P]
David Sanborn - "Smooth Jazz... as opposed to what?" [P]
David Sanborn - "Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized."
David Sanborn - "You never get it figured out. You just keep playing." [P]
David Sanborn - "You've got to be willing to put stuff on the line, otherwise it doesn't have much meaning." [P]
David Sanborn - "The more you play, the more you hear & the more you hear, the more you want to play." [P]
David Sanborn - "Its all about finding the right note at the right place & knowing when to leave it alone."
Poncho Sanchez - "I've been doing this since way before the music became popular." [P]
Arturo Sandoval - "Blow your life through your horn." [P]
Arturo Sandoval - "I am only a mixture of countless influences & thanks to that I am able to find my own style of playing."
Arturo Sandoval - "To rise above the crowd, discipline yourself unceasingly to the strict demand and realities of your ambition."
Carlos Santana - "Surrender your whole being to a note & gravity disappears." [P]
Carlos Santana - "The secret of life is to validate your existence."

Lalo Schifrin - "I like to know for whom I'm writing - it makes the composition easier to do." [P]
Robert Schumann - "To compose music, all you need to do is remember a tune that no one else has thought of." [P]
Diane Schuur - "When there was vinyl, I just loved opening a record and smelling that wonderful smell." [P]
John Scofield - "Jazz music has become academic. Sometimes that doesn't feel right to me." [P]
Hazel Scott - "I think we musicians are emissaries. Every time we go before the public, we're there to make converts." [P]
Tom Scott - "You've got to make a living but you try to find some outlet where you can explore your passion." [P]
Jimmy Scott - "I grew to see my affliction as my gift. When I sang, I soared. I could soar higher than all those hurts aimed at my heart. All I needed was the courage to be me." [P]
Maria Schneider - "Music has always been something I just sit down and I start writing and it tells me where I'm at." [P]
Cathy Segal-Garcia- "They say that Jazz is dead. Nope. It's actually alive and well. You just gotta go look it up!" [P]
Inner Self - "Doing what you love is freedom. Loving what you do is happiness." [P]

Henri Selmer - "You only go around once & this ain't no rehearsal." [P]
Bola Sete - "I do what I know will help my playing and avoid the things that interfere with it." [P]
Doc Severinsen - "Jazz can only enhance the Classical side and Classical can only enhance the Jazz side." [P]
Bud Shank - "When I play flute, the sax is eliminated from my brain. I'm only a flute player." [P]
Artie Shaw - "Shoot for the moon. If you miss you'll still end up in the stars."
Artie Shaw - "I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less."
Artie Shaw - "An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself." [P]
Artie Shaw - "I like the music. I love it & live it in fact, but for me the business part just plain stinks." [P]
Artie Shaw - "An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away."
Artie Shaw - "I can't understand guys who just have to have your autograph. What do you do when you get home, take it out & look at it?"
George Bernard Shaw - "Hell is full of musical amateurs." [P]
Marlena Shaw - "Over the years I found that getting the right tempo depends on the feeling." [P]
George Shearing - "Can anybody be given creativity? No. Only equipment to develop it if it's in them in the first place." [P]
Bobby Shew - "There's only two types of music. The stuff you can write down and the stuff you can't. The stuff that you can't write down is Jazz. Everything else is Polka." [P]

More Jazz quotes & quotations:

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