Jazz Quotes - Page 22

• My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener.

  Pat Metheny

  Music, Firsts, Kind

  50 Copy quote

• It is Jazz's very nature to change, to develop & adapt to the circumstances of its environment.

  Pat Metheny

  Music, Environment, Circumstances

  22 Copy quote

• Jazz demands that you bring to it things that are valuable to you, that are personal to you.

  Pat Metheny

  Music, Demand, Valuable

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• Smokin' at the Half Note is the absolute greatest jazz-guitar album ever made. It is also the record that taught me how to play.

  Pat Metheny

  Guitar, Play, Albums

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• I think I represent a more left-wing view of what jazz is

  Pat Metheny

  Thinking, Views, Wings

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• Bach was a top harmonist geezer, which is why the jazz cats love him.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Cat, Cat Love

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• I decided, if I'm going to be poor and black and all, the least thing I'm going to do is to try and find out who I am. I created everything about me.

  Ornette Coleman

  Music, Discovery, Who I Am

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• I've really gone into business since I got the 6 string, which was like starting all over.

  Wes Montgomery

  Starting Over, Gone, Strings

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• I could do without 'cool' publications calling me 'mom jazz.' But I laughed all the way to the bank, baby.

  Norah Jones

  Mom, Baby, Calling

  4 Copy quote

• I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation. Someone once wrote that the sound of surprise is jazz, and if there's any one thing that we must try to get used to in this world, it's surprise and the unexpected. Truly, we are living in world where the only thing that's constant is change.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Leadership, Running, Thinking

  8 Copy quote

• There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation.

  David Antin

  Editing, Jazz Improvisation, Procedures

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• My baby lives in shades of blue, blue eyes and jazz and attitude.

  Lana Del Rey

  Baby, Attitude, Eye

  Song: Shades Of Cool, Album: Ultraviolence, 2014

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• People ask me: ‘What is punk? How do you define punk?' Here's how I define punk: It's a free space. It could be called jazz. It could be called hip-hop. It could be called blues, or rock, or beat. It could be called techno. It's just a new idea. For me, it was punk rock. That was my entrance to this idea of the new ideas being able to be presented in an environment that wasn't being dictated by a profit motive.

  Ian MacKaye

  Rocks, Ideas, Space

  30 Copy quote

• When I was a kid, some of the guys would try to get me to hate white people for what they've been doing to Negroes, and for a while I tried real hard. But every time I got to hating them, some white guy would come along and mess the whole thing up.

  Thelonious Monk

  Hate, Real, Kids

  119 Copy quote

• 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

• Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy

  Thelonious Monk

  Crazy, Thinking, People

  143 Copy quote

• Everybody in all countries tries to play jazz.

  Thelonious Monk

  Country, Play, Trying

  5 Copy quote

• The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.

  Stan Getz

  Challenges, Body, Saxophone

  33 Copy quote

• Switch to piano! No. Really, if you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice. Of course, it would be best if you could actually sing with your own voice. The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. Therefore, the challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument or 'voice' that is outside of your body. I love that challenge and have for over forty-five years. As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.

  Stan Getz

  Art, Piano, Years

  5 Copy quote

• And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Offers, Knows, Ifs

  38 Copy quote

• 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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• I think that virtuosity is the first sign of morality in a musician. It means you're serious enough to practice.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Mean, Thinking, Practice

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• New Orleans had a great tradition of celebration. Opera, military marching bands, folk music, the blues, different types of church music, ragtime, echoes of traditional African drumming, and all of the dance styles that went with this music could be heard and seen throughout the city. When all of these kinds of music blended into one, jazz was born.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Military, Echoes, New Orleans

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• Blues is like the roux in a gumbo. People ask me if jazz always has the blues in it. I say, if it sounds good it does.

  Wynton Marsalis

  People, Sound, Gumbo

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• Jazz is the false liquidation of art - instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.

  Theodor Adorno

  Art, Reality, Becoming

  Theodor W. Adorno (1982). “Prisms”, p.132, MIT Press

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