Latest Jon Gordon Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• There's a lot of good people out here that want to help you grow and to help the music to continue to grow and evolve and go find those folks and be around them and carry it on... carrying the tradition on in the way with what it is that you have to offer. Find some good people in the music that will believe in you and they'll help you do that.

  Jon Gordon

  Believe, People, Want

• If you want to make [your own way in music] it as a player, which is very difficult, as Art Blakey said to me, "We're blessed to have the opportunity to do this." So just keep that in mind.

  Jon Gordon

  Art, Blessed, Opportunity

• There is a very small chance that you might be really brilliant and really talented.

  Jon Gordon

  Might, Chance, Brilliant

• It's very unlikely you're a genius, but, if you're ready to work at it hard and you want to listen to music all the time and you want to learn about it and you want to be around the people who do it, you'll find your own way.

  Jon Gordon

  People, Genius, Want

• If you go with that spirit, good things will come for you. If you go into it with an assumption that you're a genius and that you're entitled to something, it's a little tougher.

  Jon Gordon

  Genius, Littles, Spirit

• You do [jazz] because you love it and hope many some others may as well. You do this because you need it.

  Jon Gordon

  Needs, May, Jazz

• There are a lot of different ways you can be a part of this music and love it and make a contribution that's personal to you.

  Jon Gordon

  And Love, Different, Way

• [We need] someone like Don Sickler, who is an amazing trumpet player and who is also a publisher and amazing producer and composer and arranger. There's a lot of ways you can make a contribution.

  Jon Gordon

  Player, Needs, Way

• There are great jazz educators that I meet all the time. I met a guy named Paul Luchessi who has a high school jazz program in Fresno. And Bob Athayde who runs a junior high program in Lafayette, California. And man, we walked into these schools and Paul Luchessi said, "Jon is the composer of Paradox." A hundred or something kids started to applaud. "What? You guys know that? I'm so blown away.

  Jon Gordon

  Running, School, Kids

• Now we also need people who just love to listen to the music. And we need people that want to work to facilitate it. That want to do work, have somebody like Bret Primack, the jazz video guy.

  Jon Gordon

  People, Guy, Needs

• You're not going to have any pension or health care from those $60 nights at you name the club. But I think you do this because you have to do it. You pursue any art form because you need it. Because you love it.

  Jon Gordon

  Art, Night, Thinking

• Teaching has definitely become a big part of my life in the past ten plus years. As it often does for many dedicated players. Because you can have some great gigs.

  Jon Gordon

  Teaching, Past, Player

• I think that's important to remember - That we're blessed to even be able to attempt to do this [music].

  Jon Gordon

  Blessed, Thinking, Important

• Sometimes I say to my students, "We get to come and listen to our favorite recordings and try to learn from them and emulate that and hopefully we can inspire other people the way we've been inspired."

  Jon Gordon

  People, Inspire, Trying

• I never got to play with Art [ Blakey], but he was kind and spoke to me a number of times. He said, "You know, the people who are working 40 hours a week. Those are the ones who are really paying dues. Sitting at a desk doing the same thing every day. We're really blessed to do what we do."

  Jon Gordon

  Art, Blessed, Play

• I don't know that there was a moment, like one specific moment where I was like "Ugh. Now what do I do?" I was just always like, "I'm just in here and if I have to fight with myself or ask for help or just be lost for a little while, but I'm just going to keep looking." Because music was all I had.

  Jon Gordon

  Fighting, Ugh, Littles

• I remember Art Blakey saying to me, "Just remember, we're blessed to do what we do."

  Jon Gordon

  Art, Blessed, Remember

• I think what frustrated me more than anything else in my formative years was that I just had to work. I had to have a job. Like twenty to thirty hours a week, a lot of times in high school and college. And that was hard.

  Jon Gordon

  Jobs, School, College

• I didn't have time to deal with practicing in a way that I would have liked to. I wish I could have just said, "I've got four to five hours every day that I'm going to go deal with music." I just didn't' have that. I missed a lot of lessons, but I think that maybe was frustrating to me in a big picture sense of, I need the time and energy to put into my instrument.

  Jon Gordon

  Thinking, Wish, Energy

• Definitely I had a lot of times where I was really hard on myself. Really frustrated. But I never felt like I had someplace else to go. Just had to stay here and deal with this.

  Jon Gordon

  Frustrated, Deals, Felt

• I have to say, music was always my self preservation survival technique. This sort of sacred space in my life and in my mind.

  Jon Gordon

  Self, Space, Survival

• I definitely had some moments, where, "Wow, these were some hard chords" on some gig.

  Jon Gordon

  Gigs, Wow, Moments

• I never got discouraged for long, but we all got our butts kicked musically.

  Jon Gordon

  Long, Discouraged

• I remember [Joe] Lovano came around to me at that time [of Monk competition]. And I had taken some lessons with Joe and I had seen Joe on the scene. He had always been so great to me, such and inspiration and so kind. One lesson that I had with Joe was just amazing. I'm just such a fan and an admirer of his on every level. He was like, "Don't worry... you're just out here. You just do what you're doing. Don't worry if it doesn't make you a household name or anything."

  Jon Gordon

  Taken, Inspiration, Names

• I wasn't expecting [the Monk competition] would necessarily do that. So I just did what I did and some good things continued to happen and some doors continued to open and that kind of led me into the different associations that I developed in my 30s and some records that I've made on ArtistShare over the last 10 years or so.

  Jon Gordon

  Doors, Years, Competition