A Quote by Coleman Hawkins

I don't think about music as being new or modern. I just play. — © Coleman Hawkins
I don't think about music as being new or modern. I just play.
One way to think about play, is as the process of finding new combinations for known things--combinations that may yield new formsof expression, new inventions, new discoveries, and new solutions....It's exactly what children's play seems to be about and explains why so many people have come to think that children's play is so important a part of childhood--and beyond.
I never really had the chance to play the kind of music I wanted to play. It was always just classical. It had its limits. I play piano now and again in the new forms of music that I actually want to play, but at the time, it was something that I just kind of moved past.
In regard to music, I just think that it's always best to have an attitude of being a perpetual student and always look to learn something new about music, because there's always something new to learn.
In regard to music, I just think that it's always best to have an attitude of being a perpetual student and always look to learn something new about music, because there's always something new to learn. Don't dismiss something out of hand because you think it's either beneath you or outside of the realm of where your interests lie.
It's just about really being sensitive, and trying to play a music that is about music.
It is possible to enjoy the Mozart concerto without being able to play the clarinet. In fact, you can learn to be an expert connoisseur of music without being able to play a note on any instrument. Of course, music would come to a halt if nobody ever learned to play it. But if everybody grew up thinking that music was synonymous with playing it, think how relatively impoverished many lives would be. Couldn't we learn to think of science in the same way?
I just remember music always being a part of my life. I was never like, "I'm gonna be a rock star," or "I'm gonna be in a band." It was more "I just play piano, and I'm always going to play piano. That's who I am and that's cool." I think music became so ingrained in me that it was not even my choice.
When you think after 25 years of Mao, Chinese people had no idea about western music or even western culture. They had no idea about James Dean or the Beatles or Charlie Chaplin, modern music or modern cinema.
When I play my own music, or when I play new music, there's much more stress and intensity of thinking about how I'm going to make it work!
Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking. . . . the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things - all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.
A lot of people may not know how competitive it is to play classical music, because when you think about it, the music that you're playing is music that's been here for years. And all you're trying to do is improve upon it when you play.
To me living and music are all the same thing. And I keep finding out more about music as I learn more about myself, my environment, about all kinds of different things in life. I play what I live. Therefore, just as I can't predict what kinds of experiences I'm going to have, I can't predict the directions in which my music will go. I just want to write and play my instrument as I feel.
I grew up with synthesizers and weird, spacey music-hip-hop, R&B, modern rock-that I heard on the radio. That's influenced the way I play music. It's natural for me to go with what I feel. If I didn't let that other stuff out and stuck to a certain format, I would feel like I was missing out on something. I'm just enjoying my ride and being who I am.
Electronic music was just discovery about sound, all our sound options. The core percussions and melodies, they forget about it, they didn't think about those those for a good four, five years, because they were just discovering the new tools and what they could do with them, you know? The big folk revival, I think is a backlash against that. And now, I think they'll probably try to find somewhere in the middle. It's interesting. It's like push-and-pull. It's always like that, you know? Music history is always like that, this repeating evolution of music.
Part of the responsibility of being a modern storyteller is understanding modern audiences and trusting what they can handle. It's not just settling into what we think they want.
I don't really care about labels that much. I wouldn't really call our music retro. There are influences of things from the past, which there is in everything. I think we're quite a modern band, actually. We don't record with old equipment. We use computers and programmed drums. We don't use any guitar amplifiers. We're very much a modern band in the sense that we love computers and what they can do to music. I guess we're just good at a different sound.
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