Quotes from Keith Jarrett

I am a romantic, I admit it.

I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.

If music is sound & came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound.

I cannot say what I think is right about Music. I only know the rightness of it.

Silence is the potential from which music can arise.

Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there's no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.

Your own music comes out of your head and emotions, but it's not etched in your system.

I'm not talking ideas, or even presentation. It's like in politics: You have to sell something to become an electric player - like your skin or your heart.

Creativity is what makes humanity move. We were created to participate.

When you're up against an electric band like that, it's like you're on two separate planets.

If a person plays dissonance long enough, it will sound like consonance. It's a language that was alien and then it's less and less alien as it continues to live.

When you're on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn't exactly a sound - it's a hum, like the streets.

Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.

I actually get a metallic taste in my mouth when I think about electric music.

I realized that improvisers should probably always have time off. But musicians are always gigging and never have a chance to stop for a minute - unless something drastic occurs.

I can't even tolerate my own playing on electric keyboards. It's not about the musical ideas - the sound itself is toxic. It's like eating plastic broccoli.

You know, when people look at a tree, they look at the leaves; they don't look at the spaces between the leaves. They're focused on the tree. I think there's an awareness of spaces or it wouldn't look like a tree to them.

If you already have a piece of music ingrained in your body, why would you not play it?

Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.

Once we're inside a tune, we can do anything with it.

Musicians are always gigging and never have a chance to stop for a minute.

We really never know what we're gonna play when we get on stage.

The way I think about the practicing, it is my undercover work.

I'm my own most merciless critic onstage.