Jazz Quotes - Page 30

• My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener.

  Pat Metheny

  Music, Firsts, Kind

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• It is Jazz's very nature to change, to develop & adapt to the circumstances of its environment.

  Pat Metheny

  Music, Environment, Circumstances

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• When I joined the band I didn't know any of the tunes, and when I left the band I didn't know any of the tunes!

  Keith Jarrett

  Tunes, Band, Knows

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• Jazz demands that you bring to it things that are valuable to you, that are personal to you.

  Pat Metheny

  Music, Demand, Valuable

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• My greatest teacher was not a vocal coach, not the work of other singers, but the way Tommy Dorsey breathed and phrased on the trombone.

  Frank Sinatra

  Teacher, Singers, Way

  Foreword to George T Simon The Big Bands (1967).

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• I wish you wouldn't make the strings such an important part of your arrangements because frankly they're only a tax dodge!

  Tommy Dorsey

  Wish, Important, Dodge

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

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• Smokin' at the Half Note is the absolute greatest jazz-guitar album ever made. It is also the record that taught me how to play.

  Pat Metheny

  Guitar, Play, Albums

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• I think I represent a more left-wing view of what jazz is

  Pat Metheny

  Thinking, Views, Wings

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• Tommy Dorsey was the last of the band leaders... He was ahead of his time; if he got drunk, he got difficult, but then who the hell isn't difficult when you get drunk.

  Dick Haymes

  Drunk, Leader, Band

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• Bach was a top harmonist geezer, which is why the jazz cats love him.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Cat, Cat Love

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• I decided, if I'm going to be poor and black and all, the least thing I'm going to do is to try and find out who I am. I created everything about me.

  Ornette Coleman

  Music, Discovery, Who I Am

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• I've really gone into business since I got the 6 string, which was like starting all over.

  Wes Montgomery

  Starting Over, Gone, Strings

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• I could do without 'cool' publications calling me 'mom jazz.' But I laughed all the way to the bank, baby.

  Norah Jones

  Mom, Baby, Calling

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• I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation. Someone once wrote that the sound of surprise is jazz, and if there's any one thing that we must try to get used to in this world, it's surprise and the unexpected. Truly, we are living in world where the only thing that's constant is change.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Leadership, Running, Thinking

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• There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation.

  David Antin

  Editing, Jazz Improvisation, Procedures

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• Ella knows her way around her voice as very few people today. But there are times when she seems to be unaware there are things the human voice just doesn't do. She does them.

  Ella Fitzgerald

  Voice, People, Doe

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• My baby lives in shades of blue, blue eyes and jazz and attitude.

  Lana Del Rey

  Baby, Attitude, Eye

  Song: Shades Of Cool, Album: Ultraviolence, 2014

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• People ask me: ‘What is punk? How do you define punk?' Here's how I define punk: It's a free space. It could be called jazz. It could be called hip-hop. It could be called blues, or rock, or beat. It could be called techno. It's just a new idea. For me, it was punk rock. That was my entrance to this idea of the new ideas being able to be presented in an environment that wasn't being dictated by a profit motive.

  Ian MacKaye

  Rocks, Ideas, Space

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• When I was a kid, some of the guys would try to get me to hate white people for what they've been doing to Negroes, and for a while I tried real hard. But every time I got to hating them, some white guy would come along and mess the whole thing up.

  Thelonious Monk

  Hate, Real, Kids

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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

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• Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy

  Thelonious Monk

  Crazy, Thinking, People

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• Everybody in all countries tries to play jazz.

  Thelonious Monk

  Country, Play, Trying

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• The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.

  Stan Getz

  Challenges, Body, Saxophone

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• Working with Monk is like falling down a dark elevator shaft.

  John Coltrane

  Fall, Dark, Monk

  "Coltrane on Coltrane". Downbeat, September 29, 1960.

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• Switch to piano! No. Really, if you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice. Of course, it would be best if you could actually sing with your own voice. The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. Therefore, the challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument or 'voice' that is outside of your body. I love that challenge and have for over forty-five years. As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.

  Stan Getz

  Art, Piano, Years

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