Improvisation Quotes - Page 4

• I'm not a standup. I didn't start off as a writer, I learned to write through improvisation, and so that's the part of the show that can most surprise me. The written part of the show, I know I can get wrong. You can't really get the interview "wrong."

  Stephen Colbert

  Writing, Interviews, Surprise

  "Working" with David Plotz, www.slate.com. October 17, 2014.

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• Improvisation in the jazz sense - like the business sense - is not formless. It is built on a skill set. Jazz, for example, involves selecting a tune.

  John Kao

  Skills, Tunes, Example

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

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• Life is improvisation.

  Tina Fey

  Inspirational, Life Is

  "WALEAD BESHTY with Amy Ontiveros". Interview, brooklynrail.org. June 1, 2017.

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• Improvisation is a great mystery. You play something, and you play an answer to it. Then you play something to wrap it up. Nothing is going through your mind; you're not thinking of anything. Every now and then you surprise yourself. Where did that come from?

  Jimmy Knepper

  Thinking, Play, Mind

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• Most of us lead lives of chaotic improvisation from day to day, bawling for peace while plunging grimly into fresh disorders.

  Edward Abbey

  Disorder, Chaotic, Day To Day

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.26, RosettaBooks

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• Jazz Improvisation means that practice is not as straightforward as it would be when you simply have a score to play.

  Ahmad Jamal

  Music, Mean, Practice

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• Jazz is all about improvisation and it's about the moment in time, doing it this way now, and you'll never do it this way twice. I've studied the masters. Why would I want to play ball after the guys who sit on a bench? I want to play like Michael Jordan.

  Brian McKnight

  Play, Guy, Balls

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• In Jazz, improvisation isn't a matter of just making any ol' thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and vocabulary. There's no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Music, Vocabulary, Choices

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• The music of the Gypsies belongs in the sphere of improvisation rather than in any other, without which it would have no power to exist.

  Franz Liszt

  Spheres, Gypsy

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

  Henri Matisse

  Music, Jazz, Wonderful

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• Sometimes you write passages that don't need to be rewritten. Performance is that for me. Improvisation, things that happen in the moment, are sometimes wonderful, or wonderful as a moment to be shared between performer and people, but that's it. There might be a strong bond between you and the people, a transformative night, but as a live record it might not translate.

  Patti Smith

  Strong, Writing, Night

  Source: www.chicagotribune.com

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• Improvisation is just writing in front of an audience.

  Carl Reiner

  Writing, Humor, Audience

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• I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I'm blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.

  Anthony Hopkins

  Blessed, Writing, Play

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• I became immersed in the cult of improvisation. I was like one of those athletes trying to get into the Olympics. It was all about blind focus. I was so sure that I was doing exactly what I'd been put on this earth to do, and I would have done anything to make it onto that stage.

  Tina Fey

  Athlete, Focus, Trying

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• Improvisation is terribly haphazard.

  Leo Ornstein

  Haphazard

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• The score must govern the music. It must have authority, and not merely be an arbitrary jumping-off point for improvisation.

  Cornelius Cardew

  Jumping, Arbitrary, Authority

  Cornelius Cardew, Richard Barrett (2006). “Cornelius Cardew: A Reader”

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• Mozart combines serenity, melancholy, and tragic intensity into one great lyric improvisation. Over it all hovers the greater spirit that is Mozart's - the spirit of compassion, of universal love, even of suffering - a spirit that knows no age, that belongs to all ages.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Compassion, Serenity, Suffering

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• Now jamming - which is about collaborative improvisation - has to do with getting people together to be creative musically. But it is a very powerful metaphor for understanding the grammar of the creative process. It applies to business and to other pursuits as well.

  John Kao

  Powerful, People, Creative

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

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• The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.

  Jan Garbarek

  Jazz Improvisation, Elements, Jazz

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• All you're trying to do in an improvisation is get as much material as possible for the editing room.

  Martin Short

  Editing, Trying, Rooms

  Interview with Jeff Otto, www.ign.com. May 6, 2005.

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• My whole life has been one big improvisation.

  Clint Eastwood

  Rejection, Bigs, Whole Life

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• I'm very bad with improvisation. I hate it.

  Christoph Waltz

  Hate, I Hate

  "Christoph Waltz On Set Interview THE GREEN HORNET". Interview with Andre Dellamorte, collider.com. July 13, 2010.

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• I believe that improvisation is really just a directorial tool. It's a writing tool. It's not so much that the actors get to say whatever they want, whatever pops into their head. It's an opportunity to write the last draft of the screenplay as you're working on it.

  Ivan Reitman

  Believe, Writing, Opportunity

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• As an actor I worked for seven years with a community theater company based in London. We used improvisation techniques to take stories to young people who wouldn't normally have access to them - in prisons, hospitals, young offender's units, youth clubs and housing estates.

  Jenny Downham

  Years, People, Community

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• Improvisation helps because you get what's on the page and you make it a little more palatable to your tongue. And that's the beauty of creating and being spontaneous. That's the way I love to work.

  Taraji P. Henson

  Creating, Littles, Pages

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