Oscar Peterson Quotes About Jazz

• I'm a musician and, just as the critics are hard on me, I'm hard on the critics.

  Oscar Peterson

  Musician, Jazz, Critics

• It's the group sound that's important, even when you're playing a solo. You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That's jazz.

  Oscar Peterson

  Music, Important, Sound

  FaceBook post by Oscar Peterson from Oct 15, 2013

• I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea.

  Oscar Peterson

  Music, Believe, Ideas

• I don't believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.

  Oscar Peterson

  Believe, Air, Long

• I don't do something because I think it will sell 30 million albums. I couldn't care less. If it sells one, it sells one.

  Oscar Peterson

  Thinking, Albums, Care

• Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they're trying to say with jazz. You don't need any prologues, you just play. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

  Oscar Peterson

  Music, Philosophical, Play

  FaceBook post by Oscar Peterson from Mar 10, 2015

• Montreal was a very active jazz center until club owners started putting in strippers instead of music. Before long, there was nothing to hear.

  Oscar Peterson

  Long, Clubs, Jazz

• I am the worlds laziest writer.

  Oscar Peterson

  World, Jazz

• We're not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.

  Oscar Peterson

  Night, Journey, Musician

• First of all, I swore it was two people playing. When I finally admitted to myself that was one man, I gave up the piano for a month. I figured it was hopeless to practice.

  Oscar Peterson

  Men, Piano, Practice

• If the average jazz artist uses his head and at the outset of his career realizes he won't play as well at fifty as he does at twenty-five, he won't be in a line-up outside the Salvation Army when he's fifty.

  Oscar Peterson

  Army, Artist, Average

• I despair about the lack of proper respect shown for the piano. If you want it to sound like a traffic jam, go out in the street and forget the piano. That's not a piano sound.

  Oscar Peterson

  Piano, Despair, Want

• Sweets [Edison] can say more with one note than any other Jazz player alive... an approach that stresses simplicity, glorious tone, natural potency and an unmatched affinity. He is a unique stylist in our music.

  Oscar Peterson

  Sweet, Stress, Unique

• Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.

  Oscar Peterson

  Believe, Play, Ideas

  FaceBook post by Oscar Peterson from Feb 12, 2016

• He's not a performer, he's not a composer, he's not even a musician, but Norman Granz is Mr. Jazz.

  Oscar Peterson

  Musician, Jazz, Composer

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