Quotes About Jazz

The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.

My initial training was on the keyboard - mainly the great American songbook. In junior high, during the day, I was a classical clarinetist, but after school, I played New Orleans jazz and big-band music.

I don't know what America would be without New Orleans and the music.

I come to New Orleans so often that, one day soon, someone's going to declare me a native. I love the food. I love the music. I serve on the board of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra.

There's so much music going on in New Orleans.

All New Orleans music is based off dance music, even jazz.

If I have to be considered any type of jazz artist, it would be New Orleans jazz because New Orleans jazz never forgot that jazz is dance music and jazz is fun. I'm more influenced by that style of jazz than anything else.

I want a church service with New Orleans funeral jazz music. I'd like people to say a few words about me and I may have my ashes scattered in the sea.

Jazz doesn't have much to do with how I write songs, but I am a big fan. My favorites are Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal, and Mose Allison.

I have met some very strange people and some very strange cats - and I'm not talking about jazz greats. I'm talking about animals that people claim have come from outer space, and boy, they're weird!

Los Angeles has always been overlooked as far as jazz, and just high-level music in general. But, like, my dad's a musician, so I've grown up around so many brilliant musicians that nobody outside Los Angeles knows about.

Puzzelstukken uit diverse periodes, die onverwacht en onverhoopt opeens in elkaar schuiven. Zo moet het zijn om jazz te spelen. Uit de brij valt plots dat ene verscheurende akkoord, zonder repetitie en toch volmaakt getimed. Getoonzet door een genadig toeval. In dank aanvaard door de geduldige muzikant.

I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I'm a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary.

I'm a freak, everything has to be totally flat when I play. Ed Will, my jazz teacher, set up everything completely flat, and then you'd tilt your snare drum away from you, so I do that too. So my snare tilts away from me.

In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it's a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don't listen.

Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.

I wasn't very aware of pop music because I attended an arts school. For me, it was all about jazz.

One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.

I don't think that jazz, as any kind of an art form, has any permanence attached to it, apart from the practitioners of it.

Fortune ought to be a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.

When comedy is good, it's jazz. The beats of it, the looseness, the improvisational part, the music-the way you hit the inflection, the high notes of a joke. It's all melody to me.

Justin Di Cioccio led a jazz program at Music and Art, but there was no jazz in Performing Arts. After they joined, it became Laguardia School of Arts.

I don't think theater is dying, and musicals are a great American art form. We've got apple pie, jazz and musical theater.

What happens when an art form becomes ambiguous, I think, is that the standards are lowered. You can say anything is jazz. So I think it's important to reflect on what made jazz so special.