Jazz Quotes · Page 36

“Art and disease proliferate via contagion, and similar conditions favor both.”

— Ted Gioia

Keeping your artistic self as creative as possible is a balancing act.

— Karrin Allyson

I started off with the flute and French horn, and then I was playing trumpet in the jazz band.

— KiKi Layne

I like to know for whom I'm writing - it makes the composition easier to do.

— Lalo Schifrin

In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.

— Steve Lacy

Just because I'm playing jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me, the way I feel, through jazz, or…

— Charles Mingus

Jazz is all about that. It's bending things and breaking away from what's on the page and improvising.

— Laufey

Comedians talk to other comedians the way jazz musicians can talk to each other.

— David Steinberg

Companies have to take risks to get new knowledge, in a manner similar to how jazz musicians take risks when they go…

— John Kao

Electronic musicians are quite like writers or painters. They are quite isolated in their home studios. We often don't have that the…

— Jean-Michel Jarre

It's imperative that I have another channel to pour ideas into, that have been with me for quite a while, that it…

— Terence Trent D'Arby

I despair about the lack of proper respect shown for the piano. If you want it to sound like a traffic jam,…

— Oscar Peterson

I started to listen to Japanese jazz musicians when I went to high school. Some people I listened to were Yosuke Yamashita,…

— Hiromi

I went to Juilliard in New York and used to do cabarets just for fun. Occasionally, I would get together with a…

— Nicole Beharie

I can play, and I know it; I'm not looking for any pats on the back. I don't have to be endorsed…

— Curtis Fuller

I once tried to sing jazz for real. But jazz didn't do it for me. You can't have jazz without a jazz…

— Jeff Buckley

“Billie Holiday Her imperfect life led to her becoming a legendary performer with a continuing influence on American music. Born Eleanora Fagan…

— Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater One

A lot of people in the jazz community are looking at how much notoriety we're getting. And we're an inspiration to a…

— Robert Glasper

In my neighborhood - West 121st Street in New York, "white Harlem" - there were only two drugs: smack and marijuana. By…

— George Carlin

What I love about Sonny's playing is that he is so inventive within the mainstream Jazz vernacular. Because he knows so many…

— Pete La Roca

[Charlie Parker] was kind of a sponge and intrigued by it all.That's similar to what Phil [Woods] told me about Bird, too.…

— Jon Gordon

I love so many different types of music - hard rock, bebop, jazz fusion, R&B. And I've loved meeting and painting so…

— Peter Max

Before I became a writer, I was running a jazz bar in the center of Tokyo, which means that I worked in…

— Haruki Murakami

I was interested in Armstrong to begin with because he is the most important figure in Jazz in the 20th Century. There's…

— Terry Teachout

I have tons of jazz records: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis. I could go on and on.

— Ted King

Trouble follows me wherever I go. Thing I'm in is just a sack o'woe.

— Jon Hendricks

I can't understand guys who just have to have your autograph. What do you do when you get home, take it out…

— Artie Shaw

I've been listening to a lot of looped jazz stuff: Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Jaco Pastorius.

— Calum Hood

If Music is a Place -- then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, Classical is a…

— Vera Nazarian

Holy flowers floating in the air, were all these tired faces in the dawn of Jazz America.

— Jack Kerouac

My songs were influenced not so much by poetry on the page but by poetry being recited by the poets who recited…

— Bob Dylan

Trumpet players are just belligerant, and cocky, and you know, just hard-headed.

— Wynton Marsalis

When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.

— Billie Holiday

We're working as if it were going out of style-which of course it is.

— Paul Desmond

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

— Colin Greenwood

I never practice my guitar. From time to time I just open the case & throw in a piece of raw meat.

— Wes Montgomery

I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He's still a nice young man, only confused.

— Miles Davis

A chimpanzee could learn what I do physically, but it goes way beyond that. When you play, you play life.

— Jaco Pastorius

I've been invited to do a trio with a fantastic jazz guitarist and a harmonica player

— Karen Black

Sometimes you need to stand with your nose to the window and have a good look at jazz. And I've done that…

— J. J. Johnson