Jazz Music Quotes - Page 11

• I like to hear melodies that go from one extreme to the next- saxophone to a bell to a whistle, for instance.

  Roscoe Mitchell

  Music, Bells, Next

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• I think the whole question of meaning in music is difficult enough even if you hear me playing live right now in the same room! What I mean and what you take from it may be two quite different things anyway.

  Evan Parker

  Music, Mean, Thinking

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• [Miles Davis] learned from everyone. He was incredible. He took the best from everyone and threw away the rest. He was brilliant. One of the things he told me he loved about my voice was how I used space-both in music and between my voice and the mike.

  Helen Merrill

  Music, Voice, Space

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• I was devastated. I'm still devastated to this day. When talent like that disappears in a flash, you can't believe it. You deny it. Max Roach, who, of course, played with him on all those EmArcy recordings, held a concert in Baltimore for Clifford long after Clifford died. Max was still disbelieving so many years later. The concert was supposed to bring closure. But Max was so outrageously emotional that day. He had quite a few eruptions and was very emotional about what had happened so many years earlier. Like everyone, he remained disbelieving.

  Helen Merrill

  Music, Believe, Emotional

  "Helen Merrill (Part 3)". Interview with Marc Myers, www.jazzwax.com. February 4, 2009.

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• I can play, and I know it; I'm not looking for any pats on the back. I don't have to be endorsed by anybody. I make enough to live and eat, and I'm happy with my music-and that's all I need.

  Curtis Fuller

  Music, Play, Needs

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• If you listen to nature, all the sounds are done in a confident way. I'm trying to do that.

  Roscoe Mitchell

  Music, Trying, Way

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• Music needs the juxtaposition of opposites to achieve its drama, so harshness and dissonance are simply part of the material a musician can use to create a musical work. All one thing is a bore - all dissonance, or all fatuous consonance. George Winston and Guns and Roses are two sides of the same worthless coin in my esthetic world.

  Chuck Israels

  Music, Drama, Gun

  "Chuck Israels: Evans, Education And Philosophy". Interview with Sean Dietrich, www.allaboutjazz.com. May 27, 2010.

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• What I'm doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word - I love it.

  Dexter Gordon

  Music, Beautiful, Jazz

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• The thing is this: When I play, what I try to do is to reach my subconscious level. I don't want to overtly think about anything, because you can't think and play at the same time - believe me, I've tried it (laughs).

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Believe, Thinking

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• People with talent are not interested in showing off behind another person. They're more interested in the music. [Charlie Parker] was playing with me. That's the difference between the kind of musician I like to work with and singing with a musician who thinks he has to accompany me. That is so annoying I cannot tell you.

  Helen Merrill

  Music, Thinking, Differences

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• Louis Armstrong was the primary contributor to jazz music in the 20th century. His improvisational skills served as the principal model for all who came after him, regardless of one's chosen instrument.

  Ellis Marsalis, Jr.

  Skills, Jazz, Century

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• There's been this perception that Europeans still hold on to, that they discover the real talented ones in American culture and give them proper credit and that's not true anymore - it used to be. A lot of jazz musicians would get respect in Europe.

  Andrew Bird

  Real, Europe, Giving

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Jazz, Figures, Phenomenal

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• Jazz music is as American as it gets, and so is the U.S. Postal Service. A Miles Davis stamp is a perfect marriage of two great American institutions.

  Henry Rollins

  Two, Perfect, Jazz

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• I'm a jazz musician by education and vocation, but I don't think jazz should [ dictate] what I want to do.

  Dave Douglas

  Thinking, Musician, Want

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• One of the most obvious aspects of the music to people who know jazz is: How does it feel in the swing? These are things that are very subtle and that jazz musician appreciate in a particular way. I appreciate the way Tommy Flanagan swings, the way that Barry Harris swings, the great pulse that Hank Jones and Bill Evans have - end every one of them is different.

  Chuck Israels

  Swings, People, Appreciate

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• I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.

  Donald Miller

  Eye, Night, Men

  Donald Miller (2012). “Blue Like Jazz: Movie Edition: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality”, p.7, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened.

  Donald Miller

  Eye, Night, Men

  Donald Miller (2012). “Blue Like Jazz: Movie Edition: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality”, p.7, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• When I came to New York, to Brooklyn, I met Alvin Ailey and Stanley Crouch and August Wilson. They were always putting things in a philosophical context. All the great jazz musicians did, too. There was always a sub-context to what they were saying about music even though they would be very down home and earthy. So I started to develop, in addition to my power and ability to simply hear, a way to place myself in a time.

  Wynton Marsalis

  New York, Philosophical, Home

  Interview with Vickie Karp, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 18, 2009.

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• The music I like best is kind of frozen in my mind from the Sixties and Seventies. I still listen to the same jazz music I listened to when I was eighteen years old, and like and admire it just as much.

  Don DeLillo

  Years, Mind, Frozen

  "Intensity of a Plot". Interview with Mark Binelli, www.guernicamag.com. July 17, 2007.

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• I no longer wanted to satisfy myself. I really want to connect with the world and make my music mean something to people.

  Chick Corea

  Music, Mean, People

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• I'm pretty optimistic about the future of rock... it will be back to composition as in classical music or jazz.

  Jimmy Page

  Music, Optimistic, Rocks

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• Many an American jazz musician has been beguiled by the lush melodies and sumptuous rhythms of Brazilian music, but Peter Sprague has taken the romance a good deal further than most.

  Andrew S. Gilbert

  Taken, Romance, Musician

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• If income was directly proportional to technical proficiency and education, classical and jazz musicians would be some of the most affluent people in the world.

  Robert Emerson Coleman

  People, Income, World

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• To say that the Afro American created jazz doesn't mean anything bad about Anglo Americans, and I always teach my younger jazz musicians that at this point the entirety of the American tradition is your heritage, and you need to know it.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Mean, Musician, Needs

  Source: www.pbs.org

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