Quotes About Jazz

All of the most popular music of the '30s and '40s were deeply informed by jazz.

Copland was one of the first American composers to forge a truly modern style of American classical music while also making use of American popular music - including jazz.

I like Jaco Pastorius' 'Portrait of Tracy.' He was this bass player who played jazz fusion. He was the dopest bass player who ever lived.

When you're playing jazz, you have to somehow overcome that feeling of being intimidated because your aim is to portray that freedom in what you're playing.

I didn't really think I liked jazz all that much until I was about 18. That's when the freedom and possibilities of it began to seem appealing to me.

The reason New Orleans is still around is because of the celebrations it has inspired since its inception as a city. I'm always excited about the possibility of what might happen. That's what drives us, and I think that's the spirit of New Orleans and the spirit of jazz.

My roots are in classical music and jazz, and I want the freedom of being able to improvise. This freedom is possible only in a live concert.

I found that jazz musicians, possibly more than their classical counterparts, wear long-standing friendships easily and gracefully.

It's imperative that I have another channel to pour ideas into, that have been with me for quite a while, that it would be hard for people to kind of accept on first listen. Some of that would be more classically based stuff and some more jazz based.

I started writing songs for youth theater and stuff, and so it's really writing music for the stage that started me out, but then I eventually went to music college and did a two-year course in contemporary music and then just played in endless bands, cover bands, jazz bands.

My father was a huge jazz fan, so I remember him playing Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughn, and Count Basie.

One of the things that I love about Sarah Vaughan is that she was always very current.

I was a dancer for long time. And you always hear that ballet is the core of dance, and that - once you have that down - you can do everything else. For me, jazz is like that for music.

Jazz at Lincoln Center is something that is very necessary for the creative process. There's a couple of brothers running around New York, trying to buy up the cultural places, who shall remain nameless. Well, there's a lot of brothers - pick any two. Pin the tail on the... they want to buy up stuff and steer the country a certain way.

A lot of EDM is not bad at all when it's simple, but a lot of it is not really musical. That's just what I really like to do: taking what I had at the beginning, which is classical and jazz influences, and putting it into electro.

In Malaysia, we have a lot of divas, like Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey singers. And they were all so so talented, just very talented. For example, there's this one jazz singer, her name is Sheila Majid, and I was always singing her songs.

I think the people who are saying jazz has to sound a particular way, or, 'What you're doing isn't jazz,' are just scared because they can't do it. A lot of them just aren't talented enough to do anything new, honestly.

Jazz radio is not very friendly to pop singers who decide to make a jazz record. But a lot of people have been. A lot of the people I've talked to like the record.

There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation.

Isn't this your life? That ancient kiss still burning out your eyes? Isn't this defeat so accurate, the church bell simply seems a pure announcement: ring and no one comes? Don't empty houses ring? Are magnesium and scorn sufficient to support a town, not just Philipsburg, but towns of towering blondes, good jazz and booze the world will never let you have until the town you came from dies inside?

Jazz is an art form that depends on its antecedents, there must be respect for the people that have gone before.

If a jazz player is really playing, the classical player will have to respect him.

I love jazz music and sad music. I'm a sentimental guy. I'm a romantic guy.

jazz is the expression of America's romantic self, its sensual potency, its lyrical force.