Jazz Music Quotes - Page 4

• One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Dedication, Important

  14 Copy quote

• When you're dead, you're done.

  Louis Armstrong

  Done, Jazz

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• Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.

  George Szell

  Music, Giving, Jazz And Life

  Newsweek 28 Jan. 1963

  57 Copy quote

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• All a musician can do is to get closer to the source.

  John Coltrane

  Music, Jazz And Life, Source

  73 Copy quote

• Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.

  John Coltrane

  Music, Wish, Firsts

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• We're not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.

  Oscar Peterson

  Night, Journey, Musician

  23 Copy quote

• I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.

  Paul Desmond

  Music, Thinking, Mind

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• I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Years, Play

  161 Copy quote

• In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That's a little bit too much.

  Miles Davis

  Music, Mistake, Europe

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• "If you don't make mistakes, you aren't really trying."

  Coleman Hawkins

  Success, Music, Fitness

  34 Copy quote

• You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played

  Miles Davis

  Music, Play, Horns

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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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• The jazz musician's function is to feel.

  Lennie Tristano

  Musician, Jazz, Function

  4 Copy quote

• If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original.

  Duke Ellington

  Music, Jazz, Epitome

  7 Copy quote

• Making the simple complicated is commonplace.

  Charles Mingus

  Creativity, Simple, Plain Language

  Charles Mingus' statement in Mainliner Magazine (July 1977); later quoted in Olivia Bertagnolli "Creativity and the writing process" (p. 182), 1982.

  11 Copy quote

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• I compulsively reach for perfection in music, often at the expense of everything else in my life.

  Stan Getz

  Music, Perfection, Jazz And Life

  Stan Getz (2017). “Stan Getz - Omnibook: For B-flat Instruments”, p.2, Hal Leonard Corporation

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• So the whole basis for jazz music is based on the fact that the bass player could not play his instrument.

  Miroslav Vitous

  Player, Bass, Facts

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• If you don't make mistakes you are not really trying.

  Coleman Hawkins

  Fitness, Workout, Mistake

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• I never practice my guitar. From time to time I just open the case & throw in a piece of raw meat.

  Wes Montgomery

  Funny, Music, Guitar

  107 Copy quote

• If you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!

  Count Basie

  Music, Night, Play

  33 Copy quote

• The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

  Miles Davis

  Music, Men, Artist

  44 Copy quote

• By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with.

  Duke Ellington

  Music, Daughter, Mother

  "At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene". Book by Nat Hentoff, 2010.

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• Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Jazz And Life, Boundaries

  "Bird: the legend of Charlie Parker". Book by Robert George Reisner, p. 27, 1977.

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• I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground.

  John McLaughlin

  Music, School, Mean

  58 Copy quote

• If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Art, Reality

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

  32 Copy quote

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