Carla Bley Quotes

• When you are studying jazz, the best thing to do is listen to records or listen to live music. It isn't as though you go to a teacher. You just listen as much as you can and absorb everything.

  Carla Bley

  Music, Teacher, Listening

  56 Copy quote

• What's interesting about a person without problems?

  Carla Bley

  Music, Interesting, Jazz

  21 Copy quote

• I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out.

  Carla Bley

  Music, Taken, Jazz

  12 Copy quote

• I don't think you can ever regain your ignorance.

  Carla Bley

  Ignorance, Thinking, Songwriting

  5 Copy quote

• Listening is more important than anything else because that's what music is. Somebody is playing something and you're receiving it. It is sending and receiving.

  Carla Bley

  Listening, Important, Receiving

  8 Copy quote

• I got started when I was 3 years old because my father was a music teacher and my lessons were free. Instead of learning to walk, you learn to play the piano.

  Carla Bley

  Teacher, Father, Years

  4 Copy quote

• Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker seemed so sophisticated and bad. I wanted to be like that.

  Carla Bley

  Bakers, Sophisticated, Mulligans

  7 Copy quote

• I still prefer the bebop of the '40s. The very stuff I started out with is still the best to me. I have come full circle.

  Carla Bley

  Circles, Bebop, Full Circle

  84 Copy quote

• When you have 13 horns, and one is soloing, you have 12 people to play the richest, fullest chord you could ever imagine behind that solo.

  Carla Bley

  Play, People, Horny

  8 Copy quote

• When Ronald Reagan was elected I was on a bus traveling with a band in France. I wrote a little arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner in a minor key.

  Carla Bley

  Stars, Keys, Band

  8 Copy quote

• I don't need much coaxing.

  Carla Bley

  Needs

  4 Copy quote

• There are times when what's happening in rock is the best music in the world, and there are times when there is nothing worthwhile at all.

  Carla Bley

  Rocks, World, Worthwhile

  4 Copy quote

• It would be really hard to get serious about anything political today unless it was a joke.

  Carla Bley

  Political, Would Be, Today

  4 Copy quote

• One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.

  Carla Bley

  Art, Band, Music Is

  7 Copy quote

• I just got to hear every note. After I left Birdland, I started working at the Jazz Gallery. In the end, I still couldn't play, but I knew how to listen. I was probably the world's best listener.

  Carla Bley

  Play, World, Jazz

  7 Copy quote

• I dont enjoy traveling in America. I dont like the food, the cars. It is not exotic enough. It all tastes a bit like airline food.

  Carla Bley

  America, Car, Exotic

  8 Copy quote

• Living composers writing for big band are very few and far between. There are not a lot of them, and I have a talent for doing it. I am zeroing in on what I do best.

  Carla Bley

  Writing, Band, Talent

  8 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Steve Swallow

Paul Bley

Charlie Haden

Gary Burton

Ornette Coleman

John Scofield

Robert Wyatt

Steve Lacy