Quotes About Jazz

Both of my mom's parents were music teachers, so I got a lot of knowledge about everything from classical music to jazz to musicals.

Through improvisation, jazz teaches you about yourself. And through swing, it teaches you that other people are individuals too. It teaches you how to coordinate with them.

well formed. 'Angi', Graham's most famous composition, first appeared on 3/4 AD, a 1961 Topic EP split with blues guitarist Alexis Korner. Based around a deceptively easy four-chord sequence, the plucking right hand appears to do the work of a jazz trio, the thumb maintaining a steady bass pulse while the rest of the fingers tweak out the tune's ruminative syncopations. Combined

The music came back up and the next group of little girls, slightly older, came out. And there was a lot of that in the next hour and change. Older girls, sometimes the same girls, because we got to see them do ballet, jazz, and modern, even a couple of tap dances. I liked dance, and it was no reflection on the kids, but my will to live began to seep away by about the fifth group of sequined children. I

Science teachers and the mentally ill, that's all Jazz is for.

I think my knowledge of music theory is rooted in jazz theory, and a lot of the writers of standards - Rodgers and Hart, and Gershwin.

Jazz to me is a living music. It's a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.

I don't care much about music. What I like is sounds.

Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection and instrumental precision that I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn't have.

Some people are born with a brain that has this weird, magical mathematical thing that makes them an amazing jazz musician.

It's easy to mock a man who has founded a religion based on John Coltrane, who considers 'A Love Supreme,' whatever its merits as a jazz album, to be holy scripture.

I was first introduced to dancing through the TV: I remember watching ballet, jazz and ballroom dancing when I was very little. But I felt no connection with it whatsoever: it was just like watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

Whenever Elvin Jones comes to Seattle I try to go catch him.

Whenever I open a book about jazz, I turn to the index and look for Lennie Tristano, the incredible pianist; Lee Konitz, the luminous alto sax player; and Warne Marsh, the tenor player who captured some of the most beautiful sounds in the world.

Ragtime has about the same amount of respect as comics. And in a way they're similar art forms. Ragtime is highly compositional, and the emotion in the music is built in, whereas in jazz a lot of that emotion comes from the way it's performed.

I don't really get the same kinda romance that I would get from, like, jazz. And even to a lesser extent to rock 'n roll. Rock 'n roll has a romance to it - how can I put it? A very vulgar romance, but still a romance; whereas hip hop has more facade.

My grandfather, Arthur Baskerville, he played and still plays a little bit piano and trombone, and so when I was a kid, I always heard jazz around the house, but I also went to his gigs, whether it be a Saturday brunch in my hometown Columbus, Ohio. We'd go and hear him play with some of the local musicians.

Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.

Jazz, to me, is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul - the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.

Presley is country music, white music. Jazz is black music - it was invented by the blacks in New Orleans. And I'm really a jazz singer. I was impressed with Elvis - he was the handsomest guy I ever met in my life, and a very nice person, too. But the music doesn't impress me.

My dad had these great Benny Goodman albums that I was obsessed with, and Louis Prima's another guy I loved, and Peter Niro the jazz pianist. I loved international music: Irish music, Mexican music. I love the different colours that they all have.

It seems to me monstrous that anyone should believe that the jazz rhythm expresses America. Jazz rhythm expresses the primitive savage.

I grew up watching American films, listening to American music, and it's a big contribution to the rest of the world. I mean, American jazz, for me, is the best thing culturally that America has produced.

I really wanted to be a blues/jazz/gospel singer, but times had changed and disco was now the music - the new sound. I embraced it with all my heart and the rest is history.