Jazz Musician Quotes - Page 5

• 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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• My novels and poems are meant to be read aloud. That's why jazz musicians have been able to adapt my stuff.

  Ishmael Reed

  Poetry, Musician, Able

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• It is my belief that there is a tendency among the so-called 'modern' or 'hip' jazz musicians to consider styles other that their own, 'corny', and it is my contention that in actuality it is these musicians who are producing that which in future years perceptive critics will deem 'corny'.

  Don Ellis

  Years, Style, Hips

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• I'd have no trouble being the barbecue kingpin of America. I'd just add it to all the other things I am: jazz musician, carpenter, architect, engineer and revolutionary.

  Bobby Seale

  America, Musician, Add

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• If you're making money people don't think you're playing Jazz. When you're not making money they think you're a great Jazz musician.

  Pete Fountain

  Music, Thinking, People

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• If I knew what it was going to look like, I wouldnt be so excited to be a part of it. Jazz is a music of surprise; its a music of spontaneity. I think jazz musicians live--I know I do--for being surprised and not knowing whats going to come next.

  Joshua Redman

  Thinking, Knowing, Musician

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• Now as jazz musicians we're saying for this society, you can free up your imagination. You can proceed in an area without much information and you can function in an area without much information.

  Paul Bley

  Music, Imagination, Information

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• Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere.

  Mike Zwerin

  Music, Jazz, Outlaw

  1985 La Tristesse de Saint Louis: Swing Under the Nazis, ch.4.

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• Many jazz musicians affect a misunderstood-genius air when they play, which alienates the audience and breaks down the communications of the music. A musician's responsibility is to get as much of his art across as possible. Musicians used to be kept when only the rich could afford art, but now practically everyone can afford radios, stereo equipment, concert tickets, etc. A musician must learn to communicate to survive.

  Gabor Szabo

  Music, Art, Communication

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• You had many jazz musicians who lived in the United States, who had a hard time being accepted over here and had to play in sort of these inferior type dives.

  Sonny Rollins

  Hard Times, America, Play

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• We always feel pretty creative as far as writing songs. We write them together; we just get in a room, or on occasion in Flea's garage. We just sort of improvise, like jazz musicians.

  Chad Smith

  Song, Writing, Creative

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• I know I’m an African-American, and I know I play the saxophone, but I’m not a jazz musician. I’m not a classical musician, either. My music is like my life: It’s in between these areas.

  Anthony Braxton

  Play, African American, Musician

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• People who are qualified are symphonic orchestra players and jazz musicians; they're qualified to do what they do. Rock stars are lucky. It's a combination of right time, right place and having certain genes or a gimmick or whatever, but it's really not anything more than sugar. It tastes good and goes away fast.

  Gene Simmons

  Stars, Player, Rocks

  Source: www.noise11.com

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• Jazz musicians are so comfortable. The reason they can't do what we do is because they're so comfortable doin' what they do.

  Miles Davis

  Musician, Jazz, Reason

  Source: hepcat1950.com

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• [Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.

  Miles Davis

  Musician, Jazz, Feels

  Source: hepcat1950.com

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• Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, and many other great jazz musicians objected to their music being called jazz. While the outside world may want to put a label on it, those who create it think of it just as music, and tend not to classify it.

  Dave Brubeck

  Art, Thinking, Musician

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Musician, Jazz, Jazz Music

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• People who love jazz musicians love us when we play what we want to play and we're starving. But as soon as you commercialize your sound like Wes Montgomery did, the jazz fans and the critics are down on you!

  George Benson

  Music, Play, People

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• I love music. My secret dream has always been to be a jazz musician. I tried the saxophone for a year or two when I was younger, but unfortunately I had to face the fact that I was not really talented !

  Gaspard Ulliel

  Dream, Years, Two

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• The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Musician, Gabriel, Lasts

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• A jazz musician is a combination orator, dialectician, mathematician, athlete, entertainer, poet, singer, dancer, diplomat, educator, student, comedian, artist, seducer, public masturbator, and general all-round good fellow.

  Steve Lacy

  Athlete, Artist, Dancer

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• What separates great jazz musicians from average ones is Taste. Those who have taste consistently choose notes, tempos, timbres and voicings that seduce and satisfy attentive listeners.

  Marc Myers

  Average, Taste, Musician

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• The most important thing to do as an artist is to get out of your comfort zone and work with different people: people who can't read a note of music, people who have incredible classical skills, blues and jazz musicians, pop artists, visual artists, dancers and actors. Learn from people who are creative in a different way to you and you'll keep evolving.

  Katie Noonan

  Art, Skills, People

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• So for all that we might speak words in each other's vicinity, this could never develop into anything that could be called a conversation. It was as though we were speaking in different languages. If the Dalai Lama were on his deathbed and the jazz musician Eric Dolphy were to try to explain to him the importance of choosing one's engine oil in accordance with changes in the sound of the bass clarinet, that exchange might have been more worthwhile and effective than my conversations with Noboru Wataya.

  Haruki Murakami

  Oil, Trying, Musician

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”, p.78, Random House

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• I did, I was in Europe a lot. I would say, mid 20s to late 30s. Less so in the last ten or twelve years. Based on some political stuff and other things, I think I'm not the only musician, the only American jazz musician that's not going to Europe quite as much. I think we're seen a little differently in the world, unfortunately, than we were pre-Iraq invasion and things like that.

  Jon Gordon

  Thinking, Years, Europe

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