Jazz musician Quotes

Why can't jazz musicians just leave a melody alone?

— Peter Capaldi

Man, there's no boundary line to art!

— Charlie Parker

Never play anything the same way twice.

— Louis Armstrong

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; ...

— Charles Mingus

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

— Duke Ellington

I wanted to be a jazz musician.

— Ron Cephas Jones

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

— Kenneth Rexroth

Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere.

— Mike Zwerin

My novels and poems are meant to be read aloud. That's why jazz musicians have been able to adapt my stuff.

— Ishmael Reed

In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That's a little bit too much.

— Miles Davis

I'm thrilled when I hear the greatest jazz musicians. They continue to search in ways other musicians do not.

— Kurt Elling

I don't care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.

— Miles Davis

[Jazz musicians] couldn't cut rock. I had to be more limited and specific about what I was doing.

— Van Morrison

Once the jazz musician learns all the fundamentals they can keep track of a lot of choices in an instant.

— Sheena Iyengar

Jazz musicians have always tended to have cult followings, which is pretty wonderful.

— Dianne Reeves

Jazz musicians have always taken the standards of their time and performed them with a jazz sensibility.

— Dianne Reeves

I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work…

— Sonny Rollins

If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And…

— Louis Armstrong

Lars Ulrich is not a jazz drummer, but he grew up listening to jazz. Why? Because his father, Torben - an incredible…

— Robert Trujillo

If you truly have expertise - and expertise can be say a chess master who has really mastered something or an artist…

— Sheena Iyengar

If I knew what it was going to look like, I wouldnt be so excited to be a part of it. Jazz…

— Joshua Redman

Regarding jam sessions: Jazz musicians are the only workers I can think of who are willing to put in a full shift…

— George Carlin

We're [with Robbie Robertson ] jazz musicians. The context may be rock 'n' roll but it's still jazz. It's jazz and that…

— Van Morrison

Many of the jazz musicians whom are no longer here. You don't realize that it's history when it is happening and then…

— Carol Friedman

Many jazz musicians affect a misunderstood-genius air when they play, which alienates the audience and breaks down the communications of the music.…

— Gabor Szabo

I would say I take a lot of inspiration from jazz and I borrow a lot of principles from it and classical…

— Laufey

“CIA Interrogator: Have you ever met any jazz musicians you would describe, or who would describe themselves, as anarchists? Bartholomew 'Barley' Scott…

— John le Carré

Mum left school at 15, and after a few years of modelling and dating jazz musicians, was married by 21 to my…

— Natascha McElhone

I don't think I've ever been true to jazz. There's always a kind of jazz element to what I do. There are…

— Jamie Cullum

Jazz music and, more specifically, jazz musicians, are my artistic heroes. I want to be the Thelonious Monk of acting. He had…

— Trevor St. John

The age of 18 seemed the right time to try something different in my life. Moving to the U.K. was a risk,…

— Manfred Mann

Jazz musicians can be great teachers of business. Their creativity is not dependent on their mood, it does not have to be…

— John Kao

He [Benny Carter] is all that every jazz musician the world over wants to be. He's performed 20,000 nights. How many shoes…

— Wynton Marsalis

So for all that we might speak words in each other's vicinity, this could never develop into anything that could be called…

— Haruki Murakami

“Almost immediately after jazz musicians arrived in Paris, they began to gather in two of the city’s most important creative neighborhoods: Montmartre…

— Jeffrey H. Jackson

I visited New York in '63, intending to move there, but I noticed that what I valued about jazz was being discarded.…

— Joe Sample

“Not to be confused with Der Flügel, which is an earlier form of the baby grand piano, the Flugelhorn is a wind…

— Captain Hank Bracker, The Exciting Story of Cuba

“He was like a jazz musician, joyfully improvising, imagining tastes that ordinary people could not. He pulled ingredients apart and reconstructed them…

— Ruth Reichl

“Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson later said that there should be a “consilience” between art and science. 79 Former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison…

— Sarah Lewis

“There is something more to be said about our freedom to improvise inside of the composer’s form. The jazz lifestyle of the…

— Paul David Tripp