Jazz Quotes - Page 3

• 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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• I'd like to play for you one of my compositions, my only composition.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Play, Composition

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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

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• All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.

  John Coltrane

  Music, Law, Natural

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• As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.

  Mose Allison

  Swings, Personality, Essentials

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• I don't have a definition of Jazz. You're just supposed to know it when you hear it.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Definitions, Monk

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• There’s no such thing as a wrong note.

  Art Tatum

  Notes Music, Notes, Jazz Music

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• 

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

  Louis Armstrong

  Music, Asks, Ifs

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

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• Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life.

  Lester Bowie

  Music, Memorable, Exercise

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• Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate upon it in order to get the most of it.
  You must absorb most of it. The harmonies within the music can relax, soothe, relax, and uplift the
  mind when you concentrate upon and absorb it. Jazz music stimulates the minds and uplifts the souls
  of those who play it was well as of those who listen to immerse themselves in it. As the mind is
  stimulated and the soul uplifted, this is eventually reflected in the body.

  Horace Silver

  Music, Uplifting, Order

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• I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.

  Duke Ellington

  Funny, Music, Girl

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• The greatest contribution jazz has made in music has been to replace the role of the conductor with a member of the ensemble who, instead of waving his arms to keep time and convey mood, is an active member of the musical statement. That person is the drummer.

  Elvin Jones

  Musical, Ensemble, Arms

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• Jazz is my adventure. I'm after new chords, new ways of syncopating, new figures, new runs. How to use notes differently. That's it. Just using notes differently.

  Thelonious Monk

  Running, Adventure, Use

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• Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.

  Renee Fleming

  America, Niche, Surprising

  "Interviews with Bob Dole, Liz Smith, Renee Fleming, Ronan Tynan". "Larry King Live", edition.cnn.com. May 21, 2005.

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• Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.

  Jelly Roll Morton

  Music, Style, May

  1938 In Downbeat, Aug.

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• To me, nostalgia is nothing more than a mindless plundering of the past for the commonplace.

  Mel Torme

  Music, Past, Nostalgia

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• Jazz is what I play for a living.

  Louis Armstrong

  Play, Playing Jazz

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• Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young.

  Duke Ellington

  Music, Fate, Want

  Mark Tucker, Duke Ellington (1995). “The Duke Ellington Reader”, p.398, Oxford Paperbacks

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• I tell my students, 'It's an important tradition and you have to go back and hear this music and learn its language all the way through. How are you going to know what's new to play, if you haven't listened to everything that's old?'

  Jackie McLean

  Music, Play, Important

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• The value of jazz still has to be clarified. People involve themselves with its superficialities without digging for its soul.

  Stan Getz

  Music, People, Soul

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• To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.

  Nina Simone

  Music, Mean, Play

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• Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Jazz And Life, Type

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• There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.

  Henri Matisse

  Music, Wonderful, Improvisation

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• I'm all in favor of getting grants for musicians. Or any other good brand of Scotch.

  Pepper Adams

  Music, Scotch, Favors

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• Jazz is the language of the emotions.

  Charles Mingus

  Emotion, Language, Jazz Music

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