A Quote by Jessye Norman

I love singing jazz. I don't like the idea that classical music should be over here and jazz should be someplace else. It's all wonderful, and we should be open to enjoying it all.

Jessye Norman

Quote Topics

Classical Classical Music Else Enjoying Idea Jazz Like Love Music Open Over Should Singing Someplace Wonderful

Quote Author

Jessye Norman
American - Musician
Born: September 15, 1945

Jazz is smooth and cool. Jazz is rage. Jazz flows like water. Jazz never seems to begin or end. Jazz isn't methodical, but jazz isn't messy either. Jazz is a conversation, a give and take. Jazz is the connection and communication between musicians. Jazz is abandon.

Nat Wolff

Jazz should be recognized as music of the people, based in a lot of accents and melodies. What is jazz but music that people danced to? Jazz has the dynamic thing. I don't think you have to be playing only Charlie Parker licks on your horn or whatever the new version of that is.

Al Jarreau

The average age of the Jazz audience is increasing rapidly. Rapidly enough to suggest that there is no replacement among young people. Young people aren't starting to listen to Jazz and carrying it along in their lives with them. Jazz is becoming more like Classical music in terms of its relationship to the audience. And just a Classical music is grappling with the problem of audience development, so is Jazz grappling with this problem. I believe, deeply that Jazz is still a very vital music that has much to say to ordinary people. But it has to be systematic about getting out the message.

Terry Teachout

Jazz music should be inclusive. Smooth jazz to me rules out a certain kind of drama and a certain tension that I think all music needs. Especially jazz music, since improvising is one of the cornerstones of what jazz is. And when you smooth it out, you take all the drama out of it.

David Sanborn

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.

Trombone Shorty

I grew up in a home filled with music and had an early appreciation of jazz since my dad was a jazz musician. Beginning at around age three I started singing with his band and jazz music has continued to be one of my three passions along with acting and writing. I like to say jazz music is my musical equivalent of comfort food. It's always where I go back to when I want to feel grounded.

Molly Ringwald

I always say that you should just listen to it and see what you think it sounds like it is. I don't think it should be labeled. Most musicians feel like that. No one wants to put their music in a category. But, I don't think it's all over the place. I don't go from metal to jazz, or anything crazy.

Tinsel Korey

I love classical music, but I hated classical guitar. But I like flamenco, because there was something else there going on. It wasn't just the notes being thrown at you. And there were certain kinds of jazz that I really liked and other kinds that just went right over my head.

Joe Satriani

Jazz is an endless source of ideas, because you can use anything. You can play operatic arias. You can incorporate them into jazz. You can play gypsy music and incorporate it into jazz. You can European classical and you can incorporate it into jazz. You can use anything and jazz it up, as they used to say.

Sonny Rollins

It's not enough to just be a good singer. You have to know where your roots come from. If you sing jazz, you should know all about jazz. You should look into, as much as you possibly can, the history of it, so that you're and educated and well-informed performer.

Jinkx Monsoon

For me, let's keep jazz as folk music. Let's not make jazz classical music. Let's keep it as street music, as people's everyday-life music. Let's see jazz musicians continue to use the materials, the tools, the spirit of the actual time that they're living in, as what they build their lives as musicians around.

Pat Metheny

A lot of jazz artists think people should like what they're doing just because it's jazz. I don't buy that.

Pat Metheny

I wanted to look at the mentality that can breed that sort of intensity, that kind of cutthroat, pressure-cooker feeling, especially a form of music like jazz, that should be - or you'd think should be - all about liberation and improvisation and everything.

Damien Chazelle

One interesting thing about jazz, or art in general, but jazz especially is such an individual art form in the sense that improvisation is such a big part of it, so it feels like it should be less soldiers in an army and more like free spirits melding. And yet, big band jazz has a real military side to it.

Damien Chazelle

In a way, the history of jazz's development is a small mirror of classical music's development through the centuries. Now jazz is a living form of original music, while classical music has gotten to the end of its cycle in terms of exploring its form.