Jazz Quotes

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 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.

I hate Stanley Clark, but I have to admit he's playing Jazz whether I like it or not.

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.

I'm not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.

Certainly one of the more common experiences in the jazz field is discovering someone new. Improvising musicians are capable of being musical travelers, voyagers. We want to join in on whatever we hear. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape.

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.

I enjoy playing clubs. I still enjoy the closeness of the nightclub venue. However, after a certain period of time and after playing around some of the clubs in New YorkI felt that jazz should be presented in a more prestigious atmosphere.

Clifford Brown was in the jazz circles considered to be probably the greatest trumpet player who ever lived.

Jazz is letting everybody do his or her thing with the music.

The blues and jazz will live forever... So will the Delta and the Big Easy.

I still play jazz, and I've always got that trumpet very handy, but I'm coming to feel the classical venues are where my main focus is, in the realm of symphonic pops.

Many jazz artists go to L.A. seeking a more comfortable life and then they really stop playing.

In jazz, you listen to what the bass player is doing and what the drummer is doing, what the pianist and the guitarist is doing, and then you play something that compliments that, so you are thinking simultaneously and thinking ahead.

We're having a hard time understanding where jazz is going. What happened to jazz?

I'm concerned with trend. I don't know where jazz fans will come from 20 years from now.

I started writing songs when I was 10. It was a natural way to express myself as a kid. It wasn't until I started listening to jazz, joined the choir and picked up a guitar that my little hobby became something far more serious.