Jon Gordon Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• [Phil wood] put on some [Igor] Stravinsky and say to follow the score, tell me to play me the opening to the Rite of Spring. Or, "I'm going to play you some 20th century obscure classical composer you don't know". Or, "Let's listen to some Charles Ives, let's sight read some Bartok violin duets", etc.

  Jon Gordon

  Spring, Sight, Play

  4 Copy quote

• Particularly, in my situation, I needed a way out of where I was. So music was that.

  Jon Gordon

  Way, Situation, Needed

  4 Copy quote

• Families that I lived with a little bit in junior high and quite a bit in high school and college. Just to have a safe, sane space with food and things like that. That's what I needed. And people were really kind and really generous. So I think the world kind of opened up my first years of performing arts, studying classical saxophone with Caesar DiMauro.

  Jon Gordon

  Art, School, College

  12 Copy quote

• Sometimes you think "Okay, well I'm going to play my horn, and I'm going to study Charlie "Bird" Parker solos or [John Coltrain] or whatever." But as [Phil Wood] said to me, "Man, Bird listened to everything."

  Jon Gordon

  Men, Thinking, Play

  4 Copy quote

• Justin Di Cioccio led a jazz program at Music and Art, but there was no jazz in Performing Arts. After they joined, it became Laguardia School of Arts.

  Jon Gordon

  Art, School, Jazz

  4 Copy quote

• Sometimes I would go on Sundays and play with Doc Cheatham. I was also playing in a band of teenagers led by Don Sickler called Young Sounds, and The McDonald's Big Band led by Rich De Rosa and Justin Di Cioccio. All those guys were great educators and musicians and taught me a lot! Simultaneous to all this, another one of my musical fathers came into my life, Eddie Locke.

  Jon Gordon

  Teenager, Father, Sunday

  4 Copy quote

• I learned some classical music history, which I had done quite a bit at of Performing Arts. But I got some more with a great teacher named David Noon, who I've been in contact with quite a bit in recent years.

  Jon Gordon

  Teacher, Art, Years

  4 Copy quote

• [Eddie Locke] had a huge impact in my life. He was a great jazz drummer. He was mentored by Papa Joe Jones and he played for many years with Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge and actually got me on a gig with Roy Eldridge when I was 20 that I'll never forget.

  Jon Gordon

  Impact, Years, Papa

  4 Copy quote

• [Manhattan School Of Music] didn't' have a jazz undergraduate program at the time so I played a semester in the big band. There was a graduate program. But I wasn't really that involved in jazz yet.

  Jon Gordon

  School, Band, Manhattan

  4 Copy quote

• [Manhattan School Of Music] were kind of just getting the jazz program up and going when I first started there. I was 17 in September of 1984 when I started there.

  Jon Gordon

  School, Manhattan, Firsts

  4 Copy quote

• I had a great year with Bob Mintzer [at Laguardia School of Arts]. Bob is great. We could have just brought the clarinet or dealt with classical stuff, or brought the flute or just dealt with comp and arranging... what a great teacher.

  Jon Gordon

  Teacher, Art, School

  4 Copy quote

• I had a really nice association with Richie DeRosa, a great musician, a great drummer and composer and arranger. And I had a number of classes with him.

  Jon Gordon

  Nice, Numbers, Class

  4 Copy quote

• There is a very small chance that you might be really brilliant and really talented.

  Jon Gordon

  Might, Chance, Brilliant

  4 Copy quote

• Larry [ Laurenzano] said to me one day near the end of junior high, "Jon, are you Jewish?" I said, "No." And he said, "Well neither am I. I'm not sure of Caesar DiMauro, but he teaches at the JCC and I got you a scholarship there."

  Jon Gordon

  One Day, Juniors, Junior High

  4 Copy quote

• There are a lot of people that impacted me. I remember hearing Oscar Peterson live at the Blue Note, which was very expensive, but... $50 in the '80s... hard to come up with. But it was amazing.

  Jon Gordon

  Blue, People, Oscars

  4 Copy quote

• I was commuting three to four hours a day, I had jobs for much of it. But I was always involved in going to some ensemble someplace. Taking my lessons at the local Jewish community center on Staten Island.

  Jon Gordon

  Jobs, Islands, Community

  8 Copy quote

• I didn't always have time to practice as much as I wanted to do, that was a real problem for me in high school and college.

  Jon Gordon

  Real, School, College

  4 Copy quote

• When I got to Performing Arts, within the first week, a few days, Bill Charlap walked in and couldn't read music but he's playing all these solos from Keith Emerson of ELP, and Rick Wakeman from Yes. Real impressive rock piano and keyboard things. And we had really, truly amazing young 13-14 year old classical players in our year who had been practicing six, eight hours a day for eight years. So it was like "Whoa."

  Jon Gordon

  Art, Real, Player

  4 Copy quote

• [Larry Laurenzano] gave me a junior high school saxophone to take to high school, because I was always taking one of our school horns home to practice and I couldn't afford to buy one. He gave my friend, Tyrone, a tuba and he gave me a junior high saxophone for each of us to use at Performing Arts High School with. My audition piece was selections from Rocky. We were not sophisticated. But we had some spirit about it. We enjoyed it, and it was a way out.

  Jon Gordon

  Art, Home, School

  4 Copy quote

• Justin [Di Cioccio] was [at Laguardia School of Arts]. He later took over at Manhattan. But I knew Justin through the McDonald's band, which at the time I was finishing high school and starting college, I got involved with. I was not that heavily involved with the school at MSM my first year there. I took a semester off to start my 2nd year. Took classes I felt like taking during my third semester, but by the start of my third year, September of '86, they began the undergraduate jazz program and I joined that program.

  Jon Gordon

  Art, School, College

  4 Copy quote

• I was able to go over [Saxophone Competition] and work a little more in Europe. I'm thankful that those of kinds of things. Simultaneously, some nice things did come in. I got a nice festival that came in, in Virginia through that. There was a club that opened in DC in the famous Willard Hotel near the White House. And the club was called The Nest. I played there a few nights. Some musicians in Philly and D.C. kind of brought me down and got me on a couple things. So things opened up a little bit.

  Jon Gordon

  Couple, Nice, Night

  4 Copy quote

• The Monk competition did open some doors. And I was thankful for that.

  Jon Gordon

  Doors, Competition, Monk

  4 Copy quote

• A guy like Scott [Robinson] plays the whole history of music on every instrument you've ever heard of. He's just kind of an unparalleled genius.

  Jon Gordon

  Play, Guy, Genius

  4 Copy quote

• Aesthetically, I love the whole history of the music.

  Jon Gordon

  Whole

  4 Copy quote

• Many of the people I'm gratified to see have gotten acclaim like Mark Turner or Bill Charlap. Ed Simon or Maria Schneider or Jim McNeely or Scott Robinson. Ken Peplowski, who is a friend and somebody I admire a lot.

  Jon Gordon

  People, Bills, Acclaim

  4 Copy quote

Page 6 of 9

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin