Jazz Music Quotes

• What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

  Gerry Mulligan

  Music, Jazz

  51 Copy quote

• Life is a lot like jazz. It's best when you improvise.

  George Gershwin

  Music, Jazz Hands, Cool Jazz

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

  120 Copy quote

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• Jazz washes away the dust of every day life.

  Art Blakey

  Music, Memorable, Dust

  66 Copy quote

• To jazz, or not to jazz, there is no question!

  Louis Armstrong

  Jazz

  85 Copy quote

• I don't have a definition of Jazz. You're just supposed to know it when you hear it.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Definitions, Jazz

  73 Copy quote

• Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

  Miles Davis

  Music, Guitar, Self

  169 Copy quote

• Jazz music is the power of now.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Music, Jazz, Power Of Now

  8 Copy quote

• Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Years, Play, Three

  9 Copy quote

• Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

  Miles Davis

  Music, Play, African American

  "SPIN" Magazine, (p. 30), December 1990.

  38 Copy quote

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• The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.

  Herbie Hancock

  Music, Spirit, Jazz

  62 Copy quote

• A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other's ideas.

  Stan Getz

  Music, Ideas, Jazz

  52 Copy quote

• Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

  Charles Mingus

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Music

  Charles Mingus' statement in Mainliner Magazine (July 1977); later quoted in Olivia Bertagnolli "Creativity and the writing process" (p. 182), 1982.

  57 Copy quote

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• Jazz is about being in the moment.

  Herbie Hancock

  Music, Jazz, Moments

  Herbie Hancock, Lisa Dickey (2014). “Herbie Hancock: Possibilities”, p.10, Penguin

  31 Copy quote

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• Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate upon it in order to get the most of it.
  You must absorb most of it. The harmonies within the music can relax, soothe, relax, and uplift the
  mind when you concentrate upon and absorb it. Jazz music stimulates the minds and uplifts the souls
  of those who play it was well as of those who listen to immerse themselves in it. As the mind is
  stimulated and the soul uplifted, this is eventually reflected in the body.

  Horace Silver

  Music, Uplifting, Order

  50 Copy quote

• Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Memorable, Thinking

  112 Copy quote

• Jazz is the language of the emotions.

  Charles Mingus

  Jazz, Emotion, Language

  8 Copy quote

• It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Music, Taken, Play

  Quoted in N Hentoff Jazz Is (1978).

  66 Copy quote

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• Jazz to me is a living music. It's a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.

  Dexter Gordon

  Music, Dream, People

  41 Copy quote

• You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Faith, Practice

  "Acting Is a Job: Real-life Lessons About the Acting Business". Book by Jason Pugatch, p. 73, 2006.

  65 Copy quote

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• Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.

  Johnny Griffin

  Music, People, Feel Good

  48 Copy quote

• I may be prejudiced, but I believe that jazz music has the strongest healing potential, and it's not just because I play it and love it so much. I feel that it's the improvisation in jazz that makes it so strong as a healing tool, what each individual gives to a tune from their heart and their soul when they take a solo. It's all spontaneous, and it's all love, and from the heart.

  Horace Silver

  Strong, Believe, Healing

  20 Copy quote

• Change is always happening. That's one of the wonderful things about Jazz music.

  Maynard Ferguson

  Change, Music, Jazz

  55 Copy quote

• It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

  Stan Getz

  Music, Alphabet, Jazz

  23 Copy quote

• Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.

  John Philip Sousa

  Music, Feet, Free Jazz

  John Philip Sousa (2010). “Six marches”, p.52, A-R Editions, Inc.

  9 Copy quote

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• There’s no such thing as a wrong note.

  Art Tatum

  Jazz, Notes Music, Notes

  17 Copy quote