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 music is the power of now.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Music, Jazz, Power Of Now

  4 Copy quote

• Jazz washes away the dust of every day life.

  Art Blakey

  Music, Memorable, Dust

  54 Copy quote

• I may be prejudiced, but I believe that jazz music has the strongest healing potential, and it's not just because I play it and love it so much. I feel that it's the improvisation in jazz that makes it so strong as a healing tool, what each individual gives to a tune from their heart and their soul when they take a solo. It's all spontaneous, and it's all love, and from the heart.

  Horace Silver

  Strong, Believe, Healing

  16 Copy quote

• Jazz is the language of the emotions.

  Charles Mingus

  Jazz, Emotion, Language

  3 Copy quote

• Jazz to me is a living music. It's a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.

  Dexter Gordon

  Music, Dream, People

  37 Copy quote

• 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

  46 Copy quote

• 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.

  59 Copy quote

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• The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.

  Herbie Hancock

  Music, Spirit, Jazz

  56 Copy quote

• If you don't like Louis Armstrong, you don't know how to love.

  Mahalia Jackson

  Music, How To Love, Jazz

  5 Copy quote

• Blues and soul and jazz music has so much pain, so much beauty of raw emotion and passion.

  Christina Aguilera

  Pain, Passion, Soul

  53 Copy quote

• Just because I'm playing jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me, the way I feel, through jazz, or whatever.

  Charles Mingus

  Music, Writing, Play

  "An Open Letter To Miles Davis". Charles Mingus, Downbeat Magazine, November 30, 1955.

  4 Copy quote

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• I love jazz music and sad music.

  Fred Durst

  Sad Music, Jazz

  3 Copy quote

• I'm all in favor of getting grants for musicians. Or any other good brand of Scotch.

  Pepper Adams

  Music, Scotch, Favors

  3 Copy quote

• Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm.

  Jelly Roll Morton

  Sweet, Jazz, Music Is

  33 Copy quote

• 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".

  52 Copy quote

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• There is no such thing as a wrong note.

  Art Tatum

  Music, Jazz, Notes

  48 Copy quote

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

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Jazz And Life, Type

  35 Copy quote
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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)

  63 Copy quote

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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.

  110 Copy quote

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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).

  59 Copy quote

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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

  43 Copy quote

• Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.

  John Philip Sousa

  Music, Feet, Free Jazz

  John Philip Sousa (2010). “Six marches”, p.52, A-R Editions, Inc.

  5 Copy quote

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• I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

  Duke Ellington

  Music, Art, Opportunity

  "The Best of the Music Makers". Book by George Thomas Simon, 1979.

  93 Copy quote

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• Starting in the middle of a musical sentence and moving in both directions at once.

  John Coltrane

  Music, Moving, Jazz

  "Coltrane plays standards".

  153 Copy quote

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