I wouldn't call myself a leader. I don't want to lead people, I want to tempt them, I want to create a new world for them, just for that very small m….
An artist can only be evaluated after he's dead. At the 11th hour he might do something that will eclipse everything else..
I feel sorry for a culture that depends too much on delegating its musical expression to professionals. It is fine to have heroes, but we should do o….
Madam, you ask me how I compose. I compose sitting down..
Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy..
A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality..
There's nothing like music to relieve the soul and uplift it..
I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind, that I put into words, how wonderful life is, now you're in the world..
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 a….
Jazz washes away the dust of every day life..
Imitate, assimilate & innovate..
Your sound is you & what you really feel inside..
the hymns were born in the fifteenth or sixteenth century or earlier, and listening to them was like licking an icicle: the same chill, the same puri….
Music has charms to sooth a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak..
Let my children have music! Let them hear live music..
Music is the thousandth of a millisecond between one note and another; how you get from one to the other-that's where the music is..
Rap actually comes out of punk rock, not black music..
Music stays in the air. / It travels at the speed of breath / at the sound of light. / It is never not heard. / It can wait centuries if it has to..
To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable..
My neighbor Alice Pierce is fond of singing folk music to her garden plants. Thinks it makes them grow or something. The Major had often wondered how….
What I love about Sonny's playing is that he is so inventive within the mainstream Jazz vernacular. Because he knows so many ways to deal with musica….