Top 69 Quotes & Sayings by Dave Brubeck

It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me. And also it's to me the greatest instrument. I shouldn't say that, but I believe that this is the only instrument I can really feel happy about playing.

I used to take my mother to Yosemite. When I turned 14, I got my driver's license, and that's where she'd want to go, so I'd go take her there for two weeks.

When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection. Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I can hear that in their music.

I had the first integrated Army band in World War II.

I'm beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.

There's a way of playing safe, there's a way of using tricks and there's the way I like to play which is dangerously where you're going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven't created before.

The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous.

My mother Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck was a pianist who studied with Dame Myra Hess and Tobias Matthey. As a child in California I used to listen to her play Chopin.

After the Second World War, I returned to California to study composition with Darius Milhaud, who wrote wonderful works like 'Le Boeuf sur le Toit' and 'La Cretion du Monde.' I especially enjoy his work for two pianos, 'Scaramouche.'

We don't know the power that's within our own bodies.

I got a poster from Columbia Records, and there's Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, Ellington, Count Basie - everybody in that poster has died, I'm the only one left. And great players like Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, it's hard to believe they're gone because we were all so close. But I believe in the future and the tradition will go on.

Jazz is about freedom within discipline. Usually a dictatorship like in Russia and Germany will prevent jazz from being played because it just seemed to represent freedom, democracy and the United States.

Many people don't understand how disciplined you have to be to play jazz... And that is really the idea of democracy - freedom within the Constitution or discipline. You don't just get out there and do anything you want.

I have more energy at the end than I do at the beginning. You can be so beat up that you can scarcely walk on stage but when you get to the piano the excitement kicks in, you forget about being tired.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

I started growing up in a hurry and taking a lot of the philosophy I'd heard from church as a kid a lot more seriously - especially the Ten Commandments - and wondering how 'Thou shalt not kill' could be so absolutely ignored. It took me until I was in my 40s to write what I was thinking as a young soldier.

I knew I wanted to write on religious themes when I was a GI in World War II. I saw and experienced so much violence that I thought I could express my outrage best with music.

When you start out with goals - mine were to play polytonally and polyrhythmically - you never exhaust that. I started doing that in the 1940s. It's still a challenge to discover what can be done with just those two elements.

When I was first aware that I couldn't read music I didn't know I couldn't read because I could play the music that was in front of me.

That's the beauty of music. You can take a theme from a Bach sacred chorale and improvise. It doesn't make any difference where the theme comes from; the treatment of it can be jazz.

If there's a deadline, I work late. If not, I like to have normal hours, and get up early and work. When things are going well, I hate to quit. And then I'll work 'till exhausted.

My dad was the manager at the 45,000-acre ranch, but he owned his own 1,200-acre ranch, and I owned four cattle that he gave to me when I graduated from grammar school, from the eighth grade. And those cows multiplied, and he kept track of them for years for me. And that was my herd.

The first choral music I remember hearing was Handel's 'Messiah' when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcast it over the radio.

My own Brubeck Institute in California is turning out fantastic young jazz players, and I know great things will happen.

Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

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!

I wanted to be like my father, who was a cattle man and a rodeo roper. And that was - he was my hero, and I wanted to be more like him.

And there is a time where you can be beyond yourself. You can be better than your technique. You can be better than most of your usual ideas. And this is a whole other category that you can get into.

I was always very aware of drummers. My oldest brother Henry was a drummer, and he drummed on everything in the house from the kitchen sink to stovepipes. He was the first drummer in the Gil Evans Orchestra, so you've got to know how great he was.

I'm always hoping for the nights that are inspired where you almost have an out of body experience.

It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

I knew even if I'm a cowboy, I'm going to be involved in jazz in some way.

Concord, California was a great place to grow up.

I played a lot of sports and it's the plays in basketball that weren't worked out that are the ones that are just fantastic that you remember. We don't know the power that's within our own bodies.

If I told you all the people that have secretly told me I've influenced them, you'd never believe it, and you'll never see it in print, either.

Jazz isn't dead yet. It's the underpinning of everything in this country. Whether it's a Broadway show, or fusion, or right on through classical music, if it's coming out of the U.S., it's not going to survive unless it's got some jazz influence.

When I was 20, Shostakovich was my favorite composer. I still find his Fifth Symphony wonderful, with its outstanding themes and rhythms. That's the piece that made me want to be a classical composer.

Every individual should be expressing themselves, whether a politician or a minister or a policeman.

Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact.

I prefer no one to teach me. I prefer to swing on my own.

I’m beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.

Jazz is about freedom within discipline.

Jazz stands for freedom.

The secret of a great melody is a secret.

The source of inspiration can be any of the things:deep emotional experiences - say, romantic love or spiritual contemplation.I think such rare moments come only when you have total concentration. You are consumed in and by the music. I guess you could say that it is akin to contemplation. In order to reach this desirable state of mind you have to rise above the environment you're in at that particular time - a bad piano, glaring stage lights, or the attitude of the audience. Sometimes the inspiration of the other musicians you're playing with helps you reach this stage.

There are a lot of people on the lowest rung of Jacob's Ladder, and we must somehow reach down, give them a hand, and make them want to climb. A little really good music never hurt anyone. And when people are given good music they can grow spiritually and even discover they like it.

Your mother’s heartbeat is the first sound you ever hear and your own heartbeat is the last.

Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, and many other great jazz musicians objected to their music being called jazz. While the outside world may want to put a label on it, those who create it think of it just as music, and tend not to classify it.

I wasn't allowed to play in some universities in the United States and out of twenty-five concerts, twenty-three were canceled unless I would substitute my black bass player for my old white bass player, which I wouldn't do.

Art may not have the power to change the course of history, but it can provide a perspective on historical events that needs to be heard, even if it's seldom heeded. After all the temporary influences that once directed the course of history have vanished, great art survives and continues to speak to each generation.

When things are going well, I hate to quit.

Kinship doesn't come from skin color. It's in your soul and your mind.

I don't think you can separate a person's "style" and his persona. If you're writing or improvising honestly, you will inevitably reflect who you are.

I think the church should strive to give parishioners good music. Music is as necessary for worship as a building with a beautiful altar, artwork, and stained-glass windows. Together they create an environment conducive to worship and contemplation. We are not in church for entertainment, but to worship.

I'm always hoping for the nights that are inspired where you almost have an out of body experience

One of the reasons I believe in jazz is that the oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It’s the same anyplace in the world, that heartbeat. It’s the first thing you hear when you’re born — or before you’re born — and it’s the last thing you hear.

Damn it, when I'm bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic-take it or leave it.

Don't be a perfectionist... leave that to the classical musicians.

We don't know the power that's within our own bodies

Probably the most profound thing in the Bible is 'Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.' This is what, to me, is the essence of Christianity.