Jazz Quotes - Page 3

• As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.

  Mose Allison

  Swings, Personality, Essentials

  8 Copy quote

• I'd like to play for you one of my compositions, my only composition.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Play, Composition

  8 Copy quote

• We're not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.

  Oscar Peterson

  Night, Journey, Musician

  22 Copy quote

• All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.

  John Coltrane

  Music, Law, Natural

  34 Copy quote

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

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Definitions, Monk

  73 Copy quote

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

  Art Tatum

  Notes Music, Notes, Jazz Music

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• 

  If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

  Louis Armstrong

  Music, Asks, Ifs

  "Jazz Giants of the 20th Century/ Taglines". www.imdb.com. 2007.

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• Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life.

  Lester Bowie

  Music, Memorable, Exercise

  48 Copy quote

• 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

• I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.

  Duke Ellington

  Funny, Music, Girl

  57 Copy quote

• The greatest contribution jazz has made in music has been to replace the role of the conductor with a member of the ensemble who, instead of waving his arms to keep time and convey mood, is an active member of the musical statement. That person is the drummer.

  Elvin Jones

  Musical, Ensemble, Arms

  47 Copy quote

• Jazz is my adventure. I'm after new chords, new ways of syncopating, new figures, new runs. How to use notes differently. That's it. Just using notes differently.

  Thelonious Monk

  Running, Adventure, Use

  106 Copy quote

• Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.

  Renee Fleming

  America, Niche, Surprising

  "Interviews with Bob Dole, Liz Smith, Renee Fleming, Ronan Tynan". "Larry King Live", edition.cnn.com. May 21, 2005.

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• Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Music, Writing, Thank God

  Letter to Ferdinand Ries, 20 Dec. 1822

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• Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young.

  Duke Ellington

  Music, Fate, Want

  Mark Tucker, Duke Ellington (1995). “The Duke Ellington Reader”, p.398, Oxford Paperbacks

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• I think I was supposed to play jazz.

  Herbie Hancock

  Music, Thinking, Play

  7 Copy quote

• Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music.

  Herbie Hancock

  Music, Genre, Borrowed

  72 Copy quote

• If it has more than three chords, it's jazz.

  Lou Reed

  Three, Chords, Ifs

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• To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.

  Nina Simone

  Music, Mean, Play

  21 Copy quote

• Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Jazz And Life, Type

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• The value of jazz still has to be clarified. People involve themselves with its superficialities without digging for its soul.

  Stan Getz

  Music, People, Soul

  22 Copy quote

• There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.

  Henri Matisse

  Music, Wonderful, Improvisation

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• Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.

  Jelly Roll Morton

  Music, Style, May

  1938 In Downbeat, Aug.

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• At this time the fashion is to bring something to jazz that I reject. They speak of freedom. But one has no right, under pretext of freeing yourself, to be illogical and incoherent by getting rid of structure and simply piling a lot of notes one on top of the other. There's no beat anymore. You can't keep time with your foot. I believe that what is happening to jazz with people like Ornette Coleman, for instance, is bad. There's a new idea that consists in destroying everything and find what's shocking and unexpected; whereas jazz must first of all tell a story that anyone can understand.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Fashion, Believe

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