Smooth Jazz Quotes

• Jazz is smooth and cool. Jazz is rage. Jazz flows like water. Jazz never seems to begin or end. Jazz isn't methodical, but jazz isn't messy either. Jazz is a conversation, a give and take. Jazz is the connection and communication between musicians. Jazz is abandon.

  Nat Wolff

  Communication, Cool Jazz, Giving

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

  Charles Mingus

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Music

  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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• It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Music, Taken, Play

  Quoted in N Hentoff Jazz Is (1978).

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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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• Jazz music should be inclusive. Smooth jazz to me rules out a certain kind of drama and a certain tension that I think all music needs. Especially jazz music, since improvising is one of the cornerstones of what jazz is. And when you smooth it out, you take all the drama out of it.

  David Sanborn

  Drama, Thinking, Needs

  "Once-stricken saxman: Music 'gave me my life'". Interview with Shanon Cook, www.cnn.com. August 15, 2008.

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• The whole rise of new adult contemporary music and smooth jazz was a nice surprise.

  Kenny G

  Nice, Adults, Surprise

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Dinner 'conversation' at the Cohens' meant my sister, mom, and I relaying in brutal detail the day's events in a state of amplified hysteria, while my father listened to his own smooth jazz station in his head.

  Andy Cohen

  Mom, Father, Hysteria

  Andy Cohen (2012). “Most Talkative: Stories from the Front Lines of Pop Culture”, p.7, Macmillan

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• I couldn't get my album played over the so-called smooth jazz stations. Jazz stations would not play it. You don't always know who you're making that soul connection with.

  Roy Ayers

  Play, Soul, Connections

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• My other friends are in music relaxation class, which I do not attend, because smooth jazz makes me angry sometimes.

  Matthew Quick

  Class, Relaxation, Sometimes

  Matthew Quick (2010). “The Silver Linings Playbook”, p.6, Pan Macmillan

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• People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play.

  Roy Ayers

  Play, People, Style

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• Whoever invented smooth jazz, man, I wanna kill 'em: You're turning an art form into a hooker.

  Phil Woods

  Art, Men, Ems

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• Say That! is an iron fist upside the mushy head of smooth jazz, and Grant Geissman's defiant declaration of independence.

  Bill Milkowski

  Iron, Independence, Fists

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