Quotes About Jazz

Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz.

We had common interests in the beauty of the French language. We both had a tremendous love of jazz. We shared dreams of getting married and having a family, living in the country, leading an idyllic life.

I said that certain West Coast jazz was like "wet dream music." That's a great line, isn't it? You knew something happened when you woke up but you got no satisfaction!

Dance, you jazz-mad puppets of fate, and

well when I was a mechanoid, twisting the right nipple nut was the way we regulated body temperature, while the left nipple was mainly used to pick up short-wave radio transmissions. What I'm saying is, no matter how hard I twiddle them, I still can't seem to pick up Jazz FM'.

Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another theme, incorporating it, somehow trying to work their way all together to a meaning of some kind, or at least a conclusion.

I go through phases where I'm not into jazz as much, and then I'll get heavy, heavy, heavy into it.

In the States, this type of jam-band phenomena has opened it up for groups to improvise, admittedly more in the groove area, as opposed to the straight-ahead jazz thing - which is good for me, as that's one part of where I'm at. It's been so great playing these gigs and seeing kids come out and the whole college scene.

The people at Jazz at Lincoln Center are an amazing group and have done a phenomenal job teaching kids and audiences of all ages about jazz.

We are serious about our music here in Philadelphia, and jazz has meant a lot to this city.

For me, I listened to a lot of female jazz artists. And of course, the Motown and Philly sounds, all that stuff was very influential. And church and gospel.

Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music!

The first jazz pianist I heard was Thelonious Monk. My father was listening to an album of his called 'Monk's Dream' almost every day from the time I was born.

In Montreal, there is a friend of mine at school who is a jazz pianist with an amazing voice, and we sort of have this fusion/soul/R&B/folk music kind of thing. We've been keeping it low-key and opening for some friends.

It just so happens that my oldest and best friend is Bob James, the Grammy-winning great jazz pianist!

The piano has been drinking, not me.

Bud Powell's probably the biggest influence on my piano playing.

Bill Evans is a real serious jazz pianist who, in my book, crossed over boundaries in terms of color. He used the piano as his canvas.

I play piano, and I was really, really obsessive about playing piano in high school. I don't know if that's nerdy, but I definitely locked myself in the room and was playing jazz. I was 14. I guess that's kind of cool, actually.

Karl Johnson, my first piano player at Milt Trenier's, he just swung really hard and gave me a sense of really belonging to the jazz scene.

Truth be told, I think jazz is a mind-set. It's not necessarily, like, this guy picked up a horn and did this or whatever.

I started writing songs when I was 10. It was a natural way to express myself as a kid. It wasn't until I started listening to jazz, joined the choir and picked up a guitar that my little hobby became something far more serious.

I have been using small teardrop jazz picks since I was, like, 14.

The blues is the foundation, and it's got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock 'n' roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues.