A Quote by Miles Davis

[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know. — © Miles Davis
[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.
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.
I visited New York in '63, intending to move there, but I noticed that what I valued about jazz was being discarded. I ran into `out-to-lunch' free jazz, and the notion that groove was old-fashioned. All around the United States, I could see jazz becoming linear, a horn-player's world. It made me realize that we were not jazz musicians; we were territory musicians in love with all forms of African-American music. All of the musicians I loved were territory musicians, deeply into blues and gospel as well as jazz.
Jazz musicians are so comfortable. The reason they can't do what we do is because they're so comfortable doin' what they do.
Most of the musicians that I'm playing with now have jazz backgrounds, so they're comfortable with improvisation. And they all know to make eye contact with me, and I'll give them some kind of sign when I think that the song's ending. Or maybe I don't even have to, because they all sort of feel it at the same time.
I always tell people that, just to be a bad jazz musician, you have to be better than most musicians. The worst jazz musicians are normally better than most musicians, because you have to know so much.
Musicians like to converse. There's always interesting conversation with musicians - with classical musicians, with jazz musicians, musicians in general.
Jazz is the greatest American art form and our greatest export. We don't pay attention to the youth of jazz, don't stoke the fires creatively for the youth coming up. I feel like jazz musicians became too much of purists - with Donald Byrd doing funk jazz in the '70s.
Beware of clichés. Not just the ­clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought - even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are ­clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.
Lars Ulrich is not a jazz drummer, but he grew up listening to jazz. Why? Because his father, Torben - an incredible tennis player - loved jazz. Jazz musicians used to stay at their house.
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.
"Jazz" to begin with, is a really bad word... all the true musicians that really play jazz, jazz is the worst word for it. Jazz is a process. Jazz is a creative process. It's not so much a genre, but a way of expression.
Hamp would ask me about tempos in the band: 'Jacquet,' he'd say, 'knock off that tempo.' A lot of jazz musicians didn't prefer to play for dancers, which was their loss, really. But good jazz has always had that dance feel.
To say that the Afro American created jazz doesn't mean anything bad about Anglo Americans, and I always teach my younger jazz musicians that at this point the entirety of the American tradition is your heritage, and you need to know it.
We're [with Robbie Robertson ] jazz musicians. The context may be rock 'n' roll but it's still jazz. It's jazz and that means improvization...you play a tune the way it feels and you play it differently every time. It can never be the same.
It is hard not to speak in cliches about cancer. It can be even harder not to feel as if I have to live up to those cliches. I sometimes feel a deep sense of guilt for not doing a better job of making lemonade out of metaphorical lemons.
I have always loved jazz music and as a teen growing up in New York City and then later on as an adult have great memories of the jazz clubs that were all located on 52nd Street. I still catch as many jazz shows as I can when I am in New York. And when I perform, I have my jazz quartet by my side. Jazz musicians keep things spontaneous and very "live," which is the way I like to perform.
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