Jazz Musician Quotes

• A jazz musician can improvise based on his knowledge of music. He understands how things go together. For a chef, once you have that basis, that's when cuisine is truly exciting.

  Charlie Trotter

  Food, Together, Musician

  57 Copy quote
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  If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

  Louis Armstrong

  Music, Jazz, Asks

  "Jazz Giants of the 20th Century/ Taglines". www.imdb.com. 2007.

  97 Copy quote

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• When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people.

  John Coltrane

  Music, People, Desire

  37 Copy quote

• Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

  Miles Davis

  Brother, Musical, Revolution

  100 Copy quote

• Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

  Ornette Coleman

  Music, Memorable, Night

  46 Copy quote

• My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being.

  John Coltrane

  Music, Spiritual, Expression

  158 Copy quote

• My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being...When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups...I want to speak to their souls.

  John Coltrane

  Music, Spiritual, Expression

  223 Copy quote

• 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

  106 Copy quote

• Master your instrument. Master the music. And then forget all that bullshit and just play.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Play, Bullshit

  76 Copy quote

• Jazz music is the power of now.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Music, Jazz, Power Of Now

  7 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)

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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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• Life is a lot like jazz. It's best when you improvise.

  George Gershwin

  Music, Jazz Hands, Cool Jazz

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

  114 Copy quote

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• In classical music, love is based on bitin' -- imitation. It's not based on interpretation. A jazz musician, if he plays someone else's song, has a responsibility to make a distinct and original statement.

  Todd Boyd

  Song, Responsibility, Love Is

  6 Copy quote
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  Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

  Steve Martin

  Funny, Music, Dance

  64 Copy quote

• It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Music, Taken, Play

  Quoted in N Hentoff Jazz Is (1978).

  64 Copy quote

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• Women and rhythm-section first!?

  Jaco Pastorius

  Music, Bass Players, Firsts

  34 Copy quote

• It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

  Johann Sebastian Bach

  Music, Keys, Play

  186 Copy quote

• Never play anything the same way twice.

  Louis Armstrong

  Music, Play, Way

  18 Copy quote

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

  Coleman Hawkins

  Success, Music, Fitness

  33 Copy quote
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  There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.

  Duke Ellington

  Music, Two, Jazz

  Mark Tucker, Duke Ellington (1995). “The Duke Ellington Reader”, p.326, Oxford Paperbacks

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  Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Art, Men

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

  74 Copy quote

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• Man, there's no boundary line to art!

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Art, Men

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

  18 Copy quote

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• 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.

  38 Copy quote

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• After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

  Aldous Huxley

  Motivational, Music, Wisdom

  Music at Night (1931) p. 17

  77 Copy quote

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