Jazz Music Quotes - Page 4

• Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.

  George Szell

  Music, Giving, Jazz And Life

  Newsweek 28 Jan. 1963

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• When I die, I want them to play The Black and Crazy Blues, I want to be cremated, put in a bag of pot and I want beautiful people to smoke me and hope they got something out of it.

  Rahsaan Roland Kirk

  Music, Beautiful, Crazy

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• In classical music, love is based on bitin' -- imitation. It's not based on interpretation. A jazz musician, if he plays someone else's song, has a responsibility to make a distinct and original statement.

  Todd Boyd

  Song, Responsibility, Love Is

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• Music is my religion. Music is the only thing that has never failed me. People let you down, music won't.

  Gary Bartz

  Music, People, Jazz

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• One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Dedication, Important

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• Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.

  John Coltrane

  Music, Wish, Firsts

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• Women and rhythm-section first!?

  Jaco Pastorius

  Music, Bass Players, Firsts

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• I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.

  Paul Desmond

  Music, Thinking, Mind

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• All a musician can do is to get closer to the source.

  John Coltrane

  Music, Jazz And Life, Source

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• Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music as if for the first time, as if I had never heard it before. Being so inescapably a part of it, I'll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels, and that's too bad.

  John Coltrane

  Music, Wish, Firsts

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• I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Years, Play

  160 Copy quote

• You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it!

  Art Tatum

  Music, Kids, Practice

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• The jazz musician's function is to feel.

  Lennie Tristano

  Musician, Jazz, Function

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• I never practice my guitar. From time to time I just open the case & throw in a piece of raw meat.

  Wes Montgomery

  Funny, Music, Guitar

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• If you don't make mistakes you are not really trying.

  Coleman Hawkins

  Fitness, Workout, Mistake

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• If you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!

  Count Basie

  Music, Night, Play

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• Making the simple complicated is commonplace.

  Charles Mingus

  Creativity, Simple, Plain Language

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

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• If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original.

  Duke Ellington

  Music, Jazz, Epitome

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• So the whole basis for jazz music is based on the fact that the bass player could not play his instrument.

  Miroslav Vitous

  Player, Bass, Facts

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• I compulsively reach for perfection in music, often at the expense of everything else in my life.

  Stan Getz

  Music, Perfection, Jazz And Life

  Stan Getz (2017). “Stan Getz - Omnibook: For B-flat Instruments”, p.2, Hal Leonard Corporation

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• Man, there's no boundary line to art!

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Art, Men

  Quoted in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955)

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• Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Jazz And Life, Boundaries

  "Bird: the legend of Charlie Parker". Book by Robert George Reisner, p. 27, 1977.

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• By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with.

  Duke Ellington

  Music, Daughter, Mother

  "At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene". Book by Nat Hentoff, 2010.

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• The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

  Miles Davis

  Music, Men, Artist

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• If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Art, Reality

  Quoted in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955)

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