Jazz Music Quotes - Page 7

• Composing is improvisation slowed down.

  Wayne Shorter

  Music, Jazz, Composing

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• Jazz music by its very nature is just a conglomerate of a lot of different kinds of music.

  David Sanborn

  Different, Jazz, Kind

  "Once-stricken saxman: Music 'gave me my life'". Interview with Shanon Cook, www.cnn.com. August 15, 2008.

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• I have always loved jazz music and as a teen growing up in New York City and then later on as an adult have great memories of the jazz clubs that were all located on 52nd Street. I still catch as many jazz shows as I can when I am in New York. And when I perform, I have my jazz quartet by my side. Jazz musicians keep things spontaneous and very "live," which is the way I like to perform.

  Tony Bennett

  New York, Growing Up, Memories

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most.

  Harry Connick, Jr.

  Song, Musician, Jazz

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• I love jazz music and sad music. I'm a sentimental guy. I'm a romantic guy.

  Fred Durst

  Guy, Sad Music, Sentimental

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• [Lee Morgan] was the only young cat that scared me when he played. He had so much fire and natural feeling. I had more technique, but he had that feeling. People seemed to like him more than they like me at the beginning.

  Freddie Hubbard

  Music, Cat, Fire

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• I finally realized that my relaxation is practicing the piano and writing. I've tried to do other things, but I've learned through the decades, that this is what I enjoy, practicing music and writing.

  Andrew Hill

  Music, Writing, Piano

  "A Fireside Chat With Andrew Hill". Interview with Fred Jung, jazzweekly.com.

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• The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can't sing.

  Billie Holiday

  Music, Feelings, Singing

  Billie Holiday, William Dufty (2011). “Lady Sings the Blues: The 50th-Anniversay Edition with a Revised Discography”, p.163, Broadway Books

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• Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere.

  Mike Zwerin

  Music, Jazz, Outlaw

  1985 La Tristesse de Saint Louis: Swing Under the Nazis, ch.4.

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• The reward for playing jazz is playing jazz.

  John Lewis

  Music, Rewards, Playing Jazz

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• Jazz: Music invented for the torture of imbeciles.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Sarcastic, Imbeciles, Jazz

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• I think the whole question of meaning in music is difficult enough even if you hear me playing live right now in the same room! What I mean and what you take from it may be two quite different things anyway.

  Evan Parker

  Music, Mean, Thinking

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• Don't make the mistakes I made of not taking care of myself. Please, keeps your chops cool and don't overblow. If you are going to play hard, be sure to warm up. I'd get carried away trying to stay right with the momentum [of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers]. I used to try and play like Coltrane and solo for 30 or 40 choruses. It all caught up with me.

  Freddie Hubbard

  Music, Art, Mistake

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• The thing is this: When I play, what I try to do is to reach my subconscious level. I don't want to overtly think about anything, because you can't think and play at the same time - believe me, I've tried it (laughs).

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Believe, Thinking

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• Many jazz artists go to L.A. seeking a more comfortable life and then they really stop playing.

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Artist, Jazz

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• The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Musician, Gabriel, Lasts

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• People who love jazz musicians love us when we play what we want to play and we're starving. But as soon as you commercialize your sound like Wes Montgomery did, the jazz fans and the critics are down on you!

  George Benson

  Music, Play, People

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• I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Musician, Jazz, Jazz Musician

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• I can play, and I know it; I'm not looking for any pats on the back. I don't have to be endorsed by anybody. I make enough to live and eat, and I'm happy with my music-and that's all I need.

  Curtis Fuller

  Music, Play, Needs

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• Jazz musicians like John Coltrane needed these very clear titles for their abstract music, and your decision to bring voices into your music as a way to tap into content. It's related to the way my text-based work still functions as abstraction for me. If I repeat a sentence down a canvas, the text starts to smudge and disappear. It essentially becomes an abstract piece. The meaning of the text is still there.

  Glenn Ligon

  Decision, Musician, Jazz

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Miles got a mystique about him-plus he's at the top of his profession. And he's got way, way, way more money.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Music, Way, Jazz

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• What I'm doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word - I love it.

  Dexter Gordon

  Music, Beautiful, Jazz

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• I like to hear melodies that go from one extreme to the next- saxophone to a bell to a whistle, for instance.

  Roscoe Mitchell

  Music, Bells, Next

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• If you listen to nature, all the sounds are done in a confident way. I'm trying to do that.

  Roscoe Mitchell

  Music, Trying, Way

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• You have to know composition to be a good improviser.

  Roscoe Mitchell

  Music, Jazz, Composition

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