Quotes About Jazz

We went to see all the shows. American musical theater and jazz were very big.

Sometimes I practice to Allan Holdsworth or John McLaughlin, but I don't just practice to jazz and jazz-fusion albums. I'll practice to TV theme music - one of my favorites is 'M*A*S*H.' I'll just play along with anything on the TV.

The first thing I learned was the theme from Peter Gunn.

A música é um caminho, com começo, meio e fim. E o jazz é um atalho secreto.

When you are studying jazz, the best thing to do is listen to records or listen to live music. It isn't as though you go to a teacher. You just listen as much as you can and absorb everything.

Jazz is the music of the body. The breath comes through brass. It is the body's breath, and the strings' wails and moans are echoes of the body's music. It is the body's vibrations which ripple from the fingers. And the mystery of the withheld theme, known to jazz musicians alone, is like the mystery of our secret life. We give to others only peripheral improvisations.

You had to account for every move, arrival or exit. In the world there was a conspiracy against improvisation. It was only permitted in jazz.

I am pro plaque. New York is lousy with them and I love how spotting them can jazz up even the most mundane errand.

The structure of a jazz performance is, like that of the New York skyline, a tension of cross-purposes. In jazz at its characteristic best, each player seems to be—and has the sense of being—on his own. Each goes his own way, inventing rhythmic and melodic patterns which, superficially, seem to have as little relevance to one another as the United Nations building does to the Empire State. And yet the outcome is a dazzlingly precise creative unity.

Jazz is a constant theme in my life. My father is a jazz pianist, and from an early age I have been surrounded by it.

Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that's it. No America, no jazz. I've seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn't have a damn thing to do with Africa.

When I heard Monk in person in 1955, he was playing with a quartet in a small club. The place was full of musicians, but there was no public at all.

The first time I heard a professional jazz quartet practicing in a house down the street it was almost like an out-of-body experience.

We used to get on planes, and they'd ask who we were, and we'd say, 'The Dave Brubeck Quartet', and they'd say, 'Who?' In later years they'd say, 'Oh', which amounts to the same thing.

My style is a little quirky. I can't play as fast as most professional jazz players.

Call me the Scatman. I do quite a bit of scattin'.

I think of jazz as being homage through innovation. Don't quote that as a definition, but it comes pretty close.

What I love about jazz is that it's full of legends, full of myths. It's an oral history because it started in New Orleans and Kansas City, under the radar.

I think you have to have a jazz pedigree to be on jazz radio.

I fell in love with jazz when I was 12 years old from listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of jazz in New York on the radio.

I've grown up with jazz - the Joe Hendersons, Oliver Nelsons, Miles Davis and stuff - but I was also listening to, like, Slipknot, Korn, and Rage Against the Machine. There was all of that weaved - interweaved - in there, and being from L.A., you tend to know your musical history.

I think that drummers have come a long way, but they haven't forgotten players like Gene Krupa, or the other jazz players.

As far as drummers are concerned, when I was a child growing up I was really attracted to artists like Gene Kupra and Louis Bellson and Buddy Rich; a lot of the drummers that played in the popular big bands of the '40s. I would listen to their records.

Art Tatum was a genius.