Jazz Music Quotes - Page 9

• Jazz isn't like pop, where you sell millions of records with a hit. Your spirit and soul aren't important in pop music. But jazz is like classical music. If people like you, they'll remember you and you'll last forever.

  Freddie Hubbard

  Music, Remember You, Remembers You

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• Music needs the juxtaposition of opposites to achieve its drama, so harshness and dissonance are simply part of the material a musician can use to create a musical work. All one thing is a bore - all dissonance, or all fatuous consonance. George Winston and Guns and Roses are two sides of the same worthless coin in my esthetic world.

  Chuck Israels

  Music, Drama, Gun

  "Chuck Israels: Evans, Education And Philosophy". Interview with Sean Dietrich, www.allaboutjazz.com. May 27, 2010.

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• Everything-everything-was communicated through the sound of the music. There were no other signals of any kind ever-no count-offs, head nods, spoken instructions...nothing.

  Chuck Israels

  Music, Sound, Jazz

  "Chuck Israels: Evans, Education And Philosophy". Interview with Sean Dietrich, www.allaboutjazz.com. May 27, 2010.

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• Many fail to realize this great recording industry was built by so-called jazz artists. And at the other end of the spectrum, a base in European classical music as well.

  Ahmad Jamal

  Music, Artist, Europe

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• I can see forms and shapes in my mind when I solo, just as a painter can see forms and shapes when he starts painting. And I can see different colors.

  Elvin Jones

  Music, Color, Mind

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• Coltrane would do what you'd get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians.

  Colin Greenwood

  Musician, Groups, Tools

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• A jazz musician is not a jazz musician when he or she is eating dinner or when he or she is with his parents or spouse or neighbors. He's above all a human being . . . the true artform is being a human being.

  Herbie Hancock

  Parent, Musician, Dinner

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• People with talent are not interested in showing off behind another person. They're more interested in the music. [Charlie Parker] was playing with me. That's the difference between the kind of musician I like to work with and singing with a musician who thinks he has to accompany me. That is so annoying I cannot tell you.

  Helen Merrill

  Music, Thinking, Differences

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• I was devastated. I'm still devastated to this day. When talent like that disappears in a flash, you can't believe it. You deny it. Max Roach, who, of course, played with him on all those EmArcy recordings, held a concert in Baltimore for Clifford long after Clifford died. Max was still disbelieving so many years later. The concert was supposed to bring closure. But Max was so outrageously emotional that day. He had quite a few eruptions and was very emotional about what had happened so many years earlier. Like everyone, he remained disbelieving.

  Helen Merrill

  Music, Believe, Emotional

  "Helen Merrill (Part 3)". Interview with Marc Myers, www.jazzwax.com. February 4, 2009.

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• [Miles Davis] learned from everyone. He was incredible. He took the best from everyone and threw away the rest. He was brilliant. One of the things he told me he loved about my voice was how I used space-both in music and between my voice and the mike.

  Helen Merrill

  Music, Voice, Space

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• I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn't only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.

  Charles Mingus

  Music, Art, Player

  "What Is A Jazz Composer?". Charles Mingus' liner notes for "Let My Children Hear Music", album composed by Charles Mingus, January/February 1972.

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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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• 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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• 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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• I really love jazz, but I will never be a jazz musician as much as I dream. But, I think that the jazz music I love is there in my music.

  Laura Mvula

  Dream, Love Is, Thinking

  "Meet Our Latest Music Crush: Laura Mvula". Interview with Lauren Levinson, www.elle.com. March 28, 2013.

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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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• I'm not a jazz artist. Don't get me wrong now, it's all music to me. I just played music and if it's likeable, someone liked the sound, then fine, but I'm not interested in being a jazz musician. I don't consider myself a jazz musician. I don't have anything to do with that word.

  Pharoah Sanders

  Music, Artist, Sound

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• [John Coltrane] liked my qualities as a person and that's the reason why he let me play with him. It wasn't what I was doing musically or my instrument or anything like that. He let me play whatever I wanted to play.

  Pharoah Sanders

  Music, Play, Quality

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• He didn't say nothing. He would just do things. He never said nothing or explained nothing. He just would do it and that was it. You were on your own. You had to be very independent being around John [Coltrane].

  Pharoah Sanders

  Music, Independent, Jazz

  "A Fireside Chat With Pharoah Sanders". All About Jazz Interview, www.allaboutjazz.com. March 21, 2003.

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• I find that in California I can't find guys that have enough energy. They play a little bit and that's about it. They play less. If I start a tune and then the pianist has to solo, I am looking to everybody to get to a certain climate and then I come back in while the energy is up high. Somehow that doesn't happen.

  Pharoah Sanders

  Music, Play, California

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• I love more percussions more than anything. I always wanted to be a drummer.

  Pharoah Sanders

  Music, Jazz, Drummer

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• I believe in knowing all you can about the music and the people who made the music. I think it's much more important to know some good Miles Davis stories than to know how to play like Miles. I think you'll play better if you know some of the funny things he did than if you know the licks that he played.

  Sonny Sharrock

  Music, Believe, Thinking

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• Sometimes I see players that think, and you can tell they're thinking of the next phrase to play or the next thing to do, the next little cute trick, and that's sad, man, you know. That's not makin' music; that's puttin' together puzzles, you know. Music should flow from you and it should be a force; it should be feeling, all feeling, man.

  Sonny Sharrock

  Cute, Music, Player

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