Sonny Rollins Quotes About Jazz

Quotes about: Jazz

• Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

  Sonny Rollins

  Life, Music, Nature

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

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Jazz And Life, Type

• I'm not supposed to be playing, the music is supposed to be playing me. I'm just supposed to be standing there with the horn, moving my fingers. The music is supposed to be coming through me; that's when it's really happening.

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Moving, Jazz

  "Sonny Rollins: 'You Can't Think And Play At The Same Time'". "All Things Considered" with Arun Rath, www.npr.org. May 3, 2014.

• One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Dedication, Important

• No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Derivatives, Jazz

• Jazz never ends... it just continues.

  Sonny Rollins

  Jazz, Ends

• The thing is this: When I play, what I try to do is to reach my subconscious level. I don't want to overtly think about anything, because you can't think and play at the same time - believe me, I've tried it (laughs).

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Believe, Thinking

• I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress...so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Progress, Despair

• I'm fortunate that I'm making a living at it now because I'm not equipped to do anything else.

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Jazz, Making A Living

• I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz.

  Sonny Rollins

  Inspiration, Thinking, Long

• Jazz has an audience all around the globe and has had for many decades, I think speaking of the United States, let's say that what we need is more of an official recognition.

  Sonny Rollins

  Thinking, Sea, United States

• I think what we need is a more welcoming mode from the people who put on a hundred million country-western shows on television. How about a monthly jazz show?

  Sonny Rollins

  Country, Thinking, People

• 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

• I'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Want, Legends

• Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Spiritual, Jazz

• I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Essence, Jazz Improvisation

• I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.

  Sonny Rollins

  Musician, Way, Facts

• I enjoy playing clubs. I still enjoy the closeness of the nightclub venue. However, after a certain period of time and after playing around some of the clubs in New YorkI felt that jazz should be presented in a more prestigious atmosphere.

  Sonny Rollins

  Atmosphere, Clubs, Jazz

• I think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resources like a bunch of insane people. That's what I worry about more than I worry about jazz.

  Sonny Rollins

  Suicide, Thinking, Using Resources

• I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.

  Sonny Rollins

  Drinking, Musician, Clubs

• I've played with all of the heavyweights in the modern jazz, progressive jazz movement. I've been fortunate enough to play with them, a who's who. All of those guys, I've been fortunate enough to have performed with.

  Sonny Rollins

  Play, Guy, Heavyweights

• Jazz is an endless source of ideas, because you can use anything. You can play operatic arias. You can incorporate them into jazz. You can play gypsy music and incorporate it into jazz. You can European classical and you can incorporate it into jazz. You can use anything and jazz it up, as they used to say.

  Sonny Rollins

  Play, Ideas, Use

  Source: www.pbs.org

• There was a period which I refer to as the 'Golden Age of Jazz,' which sort of encompasses the middle Thirties through the Sixties, we had a lot of great innovators, all creating things which will last the world for a long, long time.

  Sonny Rollins

  Creating Things, Long, Age

• I feel that I have an obligation to jazz and also to myself to play as good as I can play.

  Sonny Rollins

  Play, Jazz, Obligation

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Many jazz artists go to L.A. seeking a more comfortable life and then they really stop playing.

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Artist, Jazz

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