Courses Quote by Hamid Drake

In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it's a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the…

— Chet Baker

There's been this perception that Europeans still hold on to, that they discover the real talented ones in American culture and give them proper…

— Andrew Bird

I grew up in the funk, rock and roll, blues and r&b tradition, and I came to this thing we call jazz later. And…

— Hamid Drake

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

— Van Morrison

We play melodic music, we play songs, we play all kinds of things and when you improvise you don't just shut out different languages,…

— Fred Frith

If you go back to the roots of jazz, it was all about COLLECTIVE improvisation.

— Henry Threadgill

In jazz, there is a lot of European influence harmonically.

— Dexter Gordon

Modern European composers...have very largely received their stimulus, their rhythms and impulses from Machine Age America. They have a much older tradition of musical…

— George Gershwin

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts.

— Ken Burns

Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another…

— Alan Arkin

Improvising musicians are musical travelers, voyagers. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape.

— Gary Burton

Growing up playing jazz and improvising has had a big impact on me, and it translates into my music.

— Stephen Bruner