Quotes About Jazz

I was really trying to sell to people who hate jazz: to make a case for the art form as youthful and energetic, not the sort of rarified intellectual activity it's painted as.

I have made a film about jazz that tries to look through jazz to see what it tells us about who we are as a people. I think that jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a kind of look into our redemptive future possibilities.

People like the idea of the trio and so I did mostly trio.

I always hated jazz guitar. I loved jazz saxophone but I hated jazz guitar. If I would buy an organ trio record I would make sure I'd buy one that did not have a guitar player on it. The sound was awful!

I had a jazz trio, a rock n' roll band, and I played drums in junior high, high school, college, big bands, and I played timpani in the symphony. I am a drummer. It's the one instrument I actually play pretty well. It's just hard to carry on your back.

I've been invited to do a trio with a fantastic jazz guitarist and a harmonica player.

I've been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet.

When I was about 18, I really started diving into Dave Matthews Band and John Mayer Trio and some of those things that have jazz elements but also a pop feel.

I went with Lionel Hampton for three years. Out of that came a trip to Europe.

Humans are imperfect. That's one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We're on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.

As time passed on, got to hear some players who were straight up funky, not just jazz. Nat Adderley, for instance - he's a funky trumpet player, so he was my man.

I always felt like the trumpet or trombone player was always the coolest dude in the room.

I started playing trumpet when I was 11 years old. All I wanted to be was a jazz trumpet player when I grew up.

The radio is playing jazz, and I listen to the sound of the trumpet playing a solo until I become that sound.

Clifford Brown was in the jazz circles considered to be probably the greatest trumpet player who ever lived.

I started off with the flute and French horn, and then I was playing trumpet in the jazz band.

I'm a trumpet player, and I sing jazz.

I fell in love with playing the trumpet because of what we call 'hot jazz' of the 1920s and 1930s, music that has a higher energy to it.

My father was incredible on trumpet and played with the likes of Duke Ellington and Count Basie.

I first heard Miles Davis as a student, when I was struck by his extraordinary musicianship, and his work did affect some of the sounds of Simply Red. He was one of the reasons I chose to have a muted trumpet on 'Holding Back the Years.'

Trust me, the only real way to understand 'Chic' is in highfalutin terms. Our chord progressions were based on European modal melodies. I made those early 'Chic' records to impress my jazz friends.

That's the exact concept behind the music: to take that kind of, I guess whatever you want to call it, jazz sensibility - but not have it be about solos.

I'm a jazz musician by education and vocation, but I don't think jazz should [ dictate] what I want to do.

Today, because I want to be gentle on my back, I listen to jazz.