Playing scales is like a boxer skipping rope or punching a bag. It's not the thing in itself; it's preparatory to the activity.
When I am silent, I fall into the place where everything is music..
[On being asked how it felt to be the first female conductor of the Boston Symphony:] I've been a woman for a little more than fifty years, and I've ….
I've been a woman for a little over 50 years and have gotten over my initial astonishment. As for conducting an orchestra, that's a job where I don't….
Words created divergencies between beings, because their precise meanings put an opinion around the idea. Music only retains the highest and purest s….
Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for: it has broadened the limits o….
As far as the execution is concerned ... the most frequent and most serious mistake is to follow the music instead of preceding it..
Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for..
There are still so many beautiful things to be said in C major..
Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody..
It doesn't have to be happy music to be inspiring..
I tried to resist his overtures, but he plied me with symphonies, quartets, chamber music, and cantatas..
It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously wit….
Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz..
Music is expression of harmony in sound. Love is the expression of harmony in life..
I cannot play a lie. I have to believe in what I play or it won't come out..
The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception. All you can do is play melody. No matter how complicated it gets, it'….
A vile beastly rottenheaded foolbegotten brazenthroated pernicous piggish screaming, tearing, roaring, perplexing, splitmecrackle crashmecriggle insa….
The value of jazz still has to be clarified. People involve themselves with its superficialities without digging for its soul..
There was mass hysteria in the Chess Recording Studio when I did the "Shapes of Things" solo ... they weren't expecting it, and it was just some weir….
A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other's ideas..