Quotes About Improvisation

When player and listener together know the route so well, the pleasure is in the deviation, the unexpected turn against the grain. To see a world in a grain of sand.

As a youngster, that's how it was: you tried to express yourself out on the pitch as much as you can. Maybe I stopped trying things when I got into the first team, but now I'm more comfortable and doing things off the cuff again.

A lot of the stuff you do as an actor - or I do, because I can't speak for everyone - is not always consciously thought out. A lot of the time, for me, it's actually just feeling stuff, and it happens all in the moment and your body reacts.

Bebop and hip-hop, in so many ways, they're connected. A lot of rappers remind me so much of bebop guys in terms of improvisation, beats and rhymes. My dream is to see hip-hop incorporated in education. You've got the youth of the world in the palm of your hand.

I record cello Etudes that are fewer than four minutes long and post them on YouTube. How can one execute fully-formed ideas with utmost perfection, yet stay free enough to allow improvisatory nuance? This has immediate application in almost every area of life, but especially in performance.

When I build for YouTube, there isn't necessarily an end goal. I have an idea of how I want a thing to work, but if it doesn't work that way, I can always adapt the story. The story is the main driver, not the machine.

In earlier years, I was more of a clown with a big bag of tricks. I'd show up in the studio and kind of go, 'Well, what do you want? Do you want the screaming banshee or the howling owl?'

I do find modern jazz quite tricky.

I find it tricky to make plans.

I've always just shown up and tried to figure out what's for lunch and am I going to get to play some racquetball that night.

The first scene I ever shot for 'Louie Bluie,' on that first day, I had never seen the camera before. I didn't know where to put it. I just knew what was strong about these guys and what I wanted to capture, so I tried to work backward from there and figure it out. Trial and error. Hopefully I got a little bit better at it.

Everybody in all countries tries to play jazz.

I never plan my speech. Very often the audience triggers me into the mood.

My favorite lineup is just a trio, because then every night you can improvise and change the repertoire. Keyboards and brass can be great, but it puts you in a different ballgame because you're not quite as free. You have to stick to the arrangement of the song.

Once, right before a show, I realized I'd forgotten shoes. I didn't want to wear my flip-flops onstage because I could trip. I ended up going barefoot, which actually worked out because it became my 'thing.'

Triple tonguing? It was sort of invented. It wasn't in the script. It was something that I came up with.

The trouble with the jokes is that once they're written, I know how they're supposed to work, and all I can do is not hit them. I'm more comfortable improvising. If I have just two or three ideas and I know how the character feels, what the character wants, everything in between is like trapeze work.

There are very few actors who are truly good at improvising; that's a real skill.

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

I played the trumpet a bit like a porker, I think.

I do a mean mouth trumpet.

Because of my register, Miles Davis' trumpet playing has always been a big influence on my singing. I've always been intrigued by the way he can start anywhere and make it right.

To some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that.

Rap music deserves truth, and it deserves spontaneity.