Quotes on Jazz Music

A jazz musician is not a jazz musician when he or she is eating dinner or when he or she is with his parents or spouse or neighbors. He's above all a human being . . . the true artform is being a human being.

What I'm dealing with is so vast and great that it can't be called the truth. It's above the truth.

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

You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom.

Jazz music is a language of the emotions.

If I knew what it was going to look like, I wouldnt be so excited to be a part of it. Jazz is a music of surprise; its a music of spontaneity. I think jazz musicians live--I know I do--for being surprised and not knowing whats going to come next.

To jazz, or not to jazz, there is no question!

If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

Never play anything the same way twice.

If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.

Master your instrument. Master the music. And then forget all that bullshit and just play.

The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.

There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. they are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence.

A jazz musician is a combination orator, dialectician, mathematician, athlete, entertainer, poet, singer, dancer, diplomat, educator, student, comedian, artist, seducer, public masturbator, and general all-round good fellow.

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking. . . . the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things - all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

Composing is improvisation slowed down.

I always think of music as interior decoration. So, if you have all kinds of music, you are fully decorated!