Jazz Music Quotes - Page 13

• 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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• 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

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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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• To say that the Afro American created jazz doesn't mean anything bad about Anglo Americans, and I always teach my younger jazz musicians that at this point the entirety of the American tradition is your heritage, and you need to know it.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Mean, Musician, Needs

  Source: www.pbs.org

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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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• Louis Armstrong was the primary contributor to jazz music in the 20th century. His improvisational skills served as the principal model for all who came after him, regardless of one's chosen instrument.

  Ellis Marsalis, Jr.

  Skills, Jazz, Century

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• Jazz musicians are the coolest people on the planet. Can I have some cool?

  Jon Stewart

  People, Musician, Jazz

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• I'm a jazz musician by education and vocation, but I don't think jazz should [ dictate] what I want to do.

  Dave Douglas

  Thinking, Musician, Want

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• Jazz music is as American as it gets, and so is the U.S. Postal Service. A Miles Davis stamp is a perfect marriage of two great American institutions.

  Henry Rollins

  Two, Perfect, Jazz

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• He [Benny Carter] is all that every jazz musician the world over wants to be. He's performed 20,000 nights. How many shoes have been shined? How much mascara put on? Rouge? How many of those impossible bowties have been tied? How many love songs have been sung? How many dances have been danced? How many have passed to the sound of his music? It's been said that a man should not be forced to live up to his art. Benny Carter is one of the rare instances when we wonder whether the great art that a man has created can live up to him.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Song, Art, Night

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• Comedy is the drug, when they laugh it's like I'm a jazz musician and they hear it, and they get it. It's power to take the crowd wherever I want them to go. I love it when they laugh, especially when they relate through laughter. It's a beautiful thing. It also means I'm going to get paid, which is nice.

  Alonzo Bodden

  Beautiful, Laughter, Nice

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• I'm not a jazz musician, because, I mean, firstly, I can't play anything. I'm not bad on the tamborine. I have a certain way with the triangle. But I'm not a jazz musician ... my band, they always joke, they always say that I'm a disposable, pop, jazz superstar.

  Michael Buble

  Mean, Play, Musician

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• I don't really have a career as a jazz musician. I don't really have a career as a classical musician. I don't really have a career as a college professor, and yet I did all those things and I did them well. I put out some records in the 1980's and 1990's that changed the way some trumpet players played.

  Paul Smoker

  Player, College, Careers

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• To date, [Wynton] Marsalis has received a total of nine Grammy Awards; a Pulitzer Prize (the first ever awarded to a jazz musician)... and twenty-nine honorary degrees, including Columbia, Brown, Princeton and Yale; the National Medal of Arts; and numerous awards from other countries.

  Randy Sandke

  Country, Art, Yale

  Randy Sandke (2010). “Where the dark and the light folks meet: race and the mythology, politics, and business of jazz”, Scarecrow Pr

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• When I'm working behind a camera, I feel like I'm trying to achieve something like a jazz musician does.

  Jack Welpott

  Trying, Cameras, Musician

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• I always tell my students when you're going to be a jazz musician the first thing you've got to do is be a professional musician, and that means you have to feed yourself with the instrument.

  Lester Bowie

  Mean, Musician, Firsts

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• I started to listen to Japanese jazz musicians when I went to high school. Some people I listened to were Yosuke Yamashita, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Sadao Watanabe.

  Hiromi

  School, People, Musician

  "The Energy Is One: An Interview With Hiromi Uehara". Interview with Wayne Zade, www.allaboutjazz.com. October 20, 2003.

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• If income was directly proportional to technical proficiency and education, classical and jazz musicians would be some of the most affluent people in the world.

  Robert Emerson Coleman

  People, Income, World

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• Jazz is the greatest American art form and our greatest export. We don't pay attention to the youth of jazz, don't stoke the fires creatively for the youth coming up. I feel like jazz musicians became too much of purists - with Donald Byrd doing funk jazz in the '70s.

  Talib Kweli

  Art, Fire, Musician

  Interview with Paul D. Miller, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• I knew I could never be accepted as a straight-ahead jazz musician, nor would Iaccept myself as that. I would never be accepted as a minimalist. I wouldn't be adowntown composer. Because I find all orthodoxies, all doctrines to be ultimatelybanal.

  Anthony Davis

  Musician, Doctrine, Orthodoxy

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• I fear that I won't get better and that I won't have time to practice. To be called a "jazz musician" - it's a big responsibility.

  Esperanza Spalding

  Responsibility, Practice, Get Better

  "Esperanza Spalding: Insubordinate by Nature". Interview with Alex Frank, pitchfork.com. March 8, 2016.

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• I was deeply influenced by the sartorial practices of both preachers and jazz musicians and actually Masha in Act One of Anton Chekhov, my favorite writer's master piece,Three Sisters,when she arrives reflecting on whether they're ever going to get to Moscow, memories of the death of their father, and she's in black, and she says I'm in mourning for the world, saying in part that I have a sad soul and a cheerful disposition.

  Cornel West

  Memories, Father, Practice

  "Cornel West, 'Living And Loving Out Loud'". "Talk of the Nation" with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. October 29, 2009.

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• I no longer wanted to satisfy myself. I really want to connect with the world and make my music mean something to people.

  Chick Corea

  Music, Mean, People

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