Jazz Music Quotes

• What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

  Gerry Mulligan

  Music, Jazz

  47 Copy quote

• Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Memorable, Thinking

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• You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Faith, Practice

  "Acting Is a Job: Real-life Lessons About the Acting Business". Book by Jason Pugatch, p. 73, 2006.

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• Jazz washes away the dust of every day life.

  Art Blakey

  Music, Memorable, Dust

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• The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.

  Herbie Hancock

  Music, Spirit, Jazz

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• 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

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• People sometimes forget that jazz was built not only in the minds of the great ones but on the backs of the ordinary ones — ordinary musicians.

  Cab Calloway

  Music, Mind, Ordinary

  "Of Minnie the Moocher and Me".

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• If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it.

  Louis Armstrong

  Life, Music, Practice

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• Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Music, Sound, Jazz

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• Make no mistake, this music is for everyone. Jazz is not an exclusive, elite club. Go ahead, listen to your Snoop Doggy Dog, Pearl Jam, Garth Brooks, but add a little Ellington, Basie and Coltrane to your life as well.

  Christian McBride

  Music, Dog, Mistake

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• You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it!

  Art Tatum

  Music, Kids, Practice

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• Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

  Ornette Coleman

  Music, Memorable, Night

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• Change is always happening. That's one of the wonderful things about Jazz music.

  Maynard Ferguson

  Change, Music, Jazz

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  Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

  Steve Martin

  Funny, Music, Dance

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  Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Art, Men

  Quoted in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955)

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• Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

  Miles Davis

  Music, Play, African American

  "SPIN" Magazine, (p. 30), December 1990.

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

  Art Tatum

  Jazz, Notes Music, Notes

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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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• There is no such thing as a wrong note.

  Art Tatum

  Music, Jazz, Notes

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• Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.

  Johnny Griffin

  Music, People, Feel Good

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• Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

  Miles Davis

  Life, Music, Beautiful

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• Life is a lot like jazz. It's best when you improvise.

  George Gershwin

  Music, Jazz Hands, Cool Jazz

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

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• Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

  Miles Davis

  Music, Guitar, Self

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• ...to me if it's anything, jazz is a verb-it's more like a process than it is a thing.

  Pat Metheny

  Musical, Jazz And Life, Verbs

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• 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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