Jazz Music Quotes - Page 12

• The type of band that I have now, the type of music that we're playing you either like it or you dislike it. If you dislike it, you probably don't know why. By the same token, you can't even really say why you like it.

  Chico Hamilton

  Music, Band, Jazz

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• The people in Japan know more about the history of jazz and the musicians than the people in the United States do.

  Billy Higgins

  Music, Japan, People

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• The people in Japan love jazz music, man, and also in Europe, far more than they ever did here. And that always puzzled me until I went over there to really get into it for myself and find out what it is. It's their tradition and culture, man. We've gotten away from that in America, man. We live in a country of complete fantasy.

  Milt Jackson

  Music, Country, Men

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• I would like to be a scholar in whatever I do, a scholar is never finished, he is always seeking and I am always seeking.

  Ahmad Jamal

  Music, Jazz, Scholar

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• What I love about Sonny's playing is that he is so inventive within the mainstream Jazz vernacular. Because he knows so many ways to deal with musical material, he is never repetitive and hasn't had to invent a new language. Also, he never asked me to do anything but swing!

  Pete La Roca

  Music, Swings, Way

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• I was deeply impressed and moved by his masterful playing. He was highly polished, profound, subtle, and intense. He was extremely fluent in a great combination of the traditional vernacular with his own. Hearing it unfold and being in a position to participate was a great pleasure. Part of being an accompanist is that the stronger the soloist, the more I can do all that I know to do. So, Joe was as good as it gets.

  Pete La Roca

  Music, Profound, Good As It Gets

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• Free music is in a constant state of surprise and, consequently, presents no surprise at all. So, I'm not really a fan of Free music. Having said that, Jazz is based on individual expression and I'm compelled to respect the Free player's option to express himself as he chooses.

  Pete La Roca

  Music, Player, Expression

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• Fusion has been my nemesis.

  Pete La Roca

  Music, Fusion, Jazz

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• Ornette Coleman is doing the only really new thing in jazz since the innovations in the mid-forties of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and those of Thelonious Monk

  John Lewis

  Music, Innovation, Dizzy

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• I think that's what really a substantial work is, it's forever. It's the truth now and it was the truth then, and it will be the truth tomorrow.

  Abbey Lincoln

  Music, Thinking, Forever

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• I was in New York, miserable because I was working supper clubs but I wasn't expressing myself. I was really unhappy with my life. I saw Max Roach again and he told me I didn't have to do things like that. He made me an honest woman on the stage. I have been performing in that tradition since. I feel that I'm a serious performer now whereas then I wanted to be but I didn't know how.

  Abbey Lincoln

  Music, New York, Unhappy

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• I never really sounded like Bird, but that was my mission. I didn't care if people said that I copied him; I loved Bird's playing so much. But Mingus was the one that really pushed me away from the idea and forced me into thinking about having an individual sound and concept. That's what I got from Mingus.

  Jackie McLean

  Music, Thinking, Ideas

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• 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.

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• What makes bebop legitimate is the fact that when it was done, it was illegitimate.

  Matthew Shipp

  Music, Bebop, Done

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• Thelonious Sphere Monk: there's not a more perfect name to fit his compositions than that name.

  Matthew Shipp

  Music, Names, Perfect

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• The iconoclastic mode, that specific mode of language, there is an element of it that it is punk - that is confrontational. That's just a part of the language of jazz - at a certain point.

  Matthew Shipp

  Music, Elements, Jazz

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• I always think of music as interior decoration. So, if you have all kinds of music, you are fully decorated!

  Wayne Shorter

  Music, Thinking, Jazz

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• I don't like drug addicts and she sounds like a cat.

  Nina Simone

  Music, Cat, Drug

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• I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.

  Nina Simone

  Music, Rights, People

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• Talent is a burden not a joy. I am not of this planet. I do not come from you. I am not like you.

  Nina Simone

  Music, Joy, Jazz

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• Many an American jazz musician has been beguiled by the lush melodies and sumptuous rhythms of Brazilian music, but Peter Sprague has taken the romance a good deal further than most.

  Andrew S. Gilbert

  Taken, Romance, Musician

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• I don't listen to a lot of music when I have my free time. But I'll go to a jazz club and have a drink and listen to a good jazz musician. Or sometimes in the morning, if I want to put myself in a good mood, I'll put on some Latin music.

  Joshua Bell

  Morning, Latin, Musician

  "Joshua Bell’s Virtuoso Reality". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. May 2011.

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• When I did the Abyssinian mass, I went through the whole history of the church music and the gospel music, even with the Anglo American hymns, the Afro American hymns, the spirituals and how it developed, up to Thomas Dorsey and the Dixie Hummingbirds, going through the history of the music, jazz musicians.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Church Music, Hymns, Musician

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• One of the most obvious aspects of the music to people who know jazz is: How does it feel in the swing? These are things that are very subtle and that jazz musician appreciate in a particular way. I appreciate the way Tommy Flanagan swings, the way that Barry Harris swings, the great pulse that Hank Jones and Bill Evans have - end every one of them is different.

  Chuck Israels

  Swings, People, Appreciate

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• There's been this perception that Europeans still hold on to, that they discover the real talented ones in American culture and give them proper credit and that's not true anymore - it used to be. A lot of jazz musicians would get respect in Europe.

  Andrew Bird

  Real, Europe, Giving

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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