Symphony musicians are not trained in improvising, certainly not in a jazz style.

- Gunther Schuller

I was playing in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra as principal horn. I was there for some 15 years - one of the most exciting and great musical perio…

- Gunther Schuller

I don't hate work, composing is not work for me, it's my pleasure; it's my life. So why should I stop? If something is pleasurable and exciting and r…

- Gunther Schuller

I wanted to be an artist, but at age 11, somehow all this musical knowledge and information and love for music that I had came out, and then suddenly…

- Gunther Schuller

And it is this sense that some of us have to contribute to the culture, to the society in ways that may hurt financially, so what? We do it because w…

- Gunther Schuller

Many people think of me as a modernist, as a radical in music, you know, someone who's always sort of at the avant-garde of musics, but I'm also quit…

- Gunther Schuller

His musical inspiration operates in a world uncluttered by conventional bar lines, conventional chord changes, and conventional ways of blowing or fi…

- Gunther Schuller

My primary calling, I always knew since the age of 11, was as a composer, and so that had to take priority.

- Gunther Schuller

My whole childhood was filled with classical music and going to concerts of the New York Philharmonic and other New York ensembles and organizations,…

- Gunther Schuller