Jazz Quotes

Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.

The first jazz pianist I heard was Thelonious Monk. My father was listening to an album of his called 'Monk's Dream' almost every day from the time I was born.

Jazz was uplifted by what I did.

I like a very dark house, just black. I sit there and just think. Once I'm still and quiet inside, I'll begin. It's very personal; it has to be. One song may be Bach, the next blues, a song from TV, or a nursery rhyme or jazz piece.

I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz.

Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can't be taught.

All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues.

People sometimes say it takes a long time to become a jazz fan, but for me it took about five seconds.

Some people say there was no jazz tenor before me. All I know is I just had a way of playing and I didn't think in terms of any other instrument but the tenor.

Shoes are a big part of your look. I think that if your outfit isn't really something special, then fun footwear is a great way to jazz it up and make your ensemble more interesting.

I wasn't very aware of pop music because I attended an arts school. For me, it was all about jazz.

I missed jazz, kind of. And by the time I came to it in life, it was too intimidating to enjoy thoroughly.

The iconoclastic mode, that specific mode of language, there is an element of it that it is punk - that is confrontational. That's just a part of the language of jazz - at a certain point.

I always told the people at Cal Arts that if they wanted me to do Jazz studies, first of all, there couldn't be a big band within 500 miles and that I could do what I wanted to do. And they said I could.

Possibly, I should have been a jazz singer from the beginning.

I listen to classical music very much. There's a lot of jazz that I don't enjoy listening to.

Not with the Rochester Philharmonic, but I formed my own orchestra, made up of musicians from the Eastman School, where I'm on the faculty now, direct the Jazz Ensemble and teach improvisation classes.

I like to listen to classical music... I like mainline jazz.

I stayed with them for about a year up there and, at night, worked over in Long Island at a club called The High Hat Club which was like a pseudo jazz / blues place.

I recorded my first jazz record in the '70s.

I don't want to appear hostile, like I'm hostile to L.A. or that I feel that the people don't appreciate jazz. I don't think it's that. I think it's something more. It's something a little bit more complicated than that.

Now, the instrumentation in the jazz band and the jazz dance band has gone through many evolutions. For instance, in the 'twenties the tradition was two or three saxophones.

My brother Leon started it all. He played the piano. In school they made me leader of the orchestra because I played the violin, but I followed Leon and the boys in his jazz band around.

It's not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.

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

You can't seperate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues - you can't seperate it. Because that's where it all started, and that's where it all come from - that's where I learned to keep rhythm - in church.

The French - they like jazz, they've been on jazz a long time.

Miles Davis was doing something inherently African, something that has to do with all forms of American music, not just jazz.

I wasn't a trained Mickey Mouse club performer. I played in jazz clubs and restaurants.

It's true I've always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.