Top 1200 Jazz Band Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

I played the drums. I basically started off in drum line. So it was just straight percussion. Then I got into the drum set. I was in the jazz band and then all through high school I was in orchestra.

A band like Avenged Sevenfold I've praised quite a bit publicly, because it's a band that has moved into that arena-size thing for a hard rock band.

My father is a jazz musician, so I grew up hearing jazz. My parents loved it, but I didn't like it. It went on for too long. Yes, I had certain teachers that really inspired me, like Danny Barker, and John Longo. And I had no idea that I would have any impact on jazz.

What does surprise me, though, is the amount of attention this band [Guns'n'Roses] has garnered 11 years after the original lineup broke up. That's an interesting phenomenon. It was even interesting back in the day. I mean, [we were] this glorified garage band. It was a great band, but it was not the kind of band you expected to become what it has.

When I was in high school, The Dave Matthews Band was a local band, and that was the first time I was starting to connect with a live band that was something that wasn't on the radio or TV.

Revamp is a band that would deserve the hundred-percent devotion a band needs, and at this moment, I don't see any future for another band next to a band such as Nightwish, and with the ambition to become a mother, I will have to let Revamp go, which is a very sad decision.

We went from being thought of and talked about as "a band that plays a so-and-so style of music" (a grunge band, a stoner band, etc) to "a band that plays music with a certain sensibility or style to it". I'm not able to see quite what that is, but it's there and some people like it a lot.

I was asked to be in Elton John's band, Joni Mitchell's band, and Miles Davis' band. I couldn't do it.

My dad is a big jazz fan, and that was the reason I first got into jazz.

The French - they like jazz, theyve been on jazz a long time.

Kurt Cobain was Nirvana. He named the band, hired its members, played guitar, wrote the songs, fronted the band onstage and in interviews, and took responsibility for the band's business decisions.

Porcupine Tree is a band, and it's not up to me where the band goes - it's between the manager, our agent, and the band as a whole.

Jazz is a fighter. The word 'jazz' means to me, 'I dare you. Let's jump into the unknown!'

As jazz fans, it was amusing for us to play jazz harmonies on these big, ugly electric guitars.

Jazz musicians have always taken the standards of their time and performed them with a jazz sensibility.

I've had experiences where people say, 'I hated jazz before I heard you guys!' I'm like, 'You didn't hate jazz before you heard us; you hated the idea of jazz.'

I'm a jazz musician by education and vocation, but I don't think jazz should [ dictate] what I want to do.

I've listened to Jazz since I was born and always knew I'd be a Jazz singer!

The French - they like jazz, they've been on jazz a long time.

What's cool about indie rock is that one band can do effectively the same thing as another band, and one band nails it, and the other one doesn't. I like that elusiveness.

My brother Leon started it all. He played the piano. In school they made me leader of the orchestra because I played the violin, but I followed Leon and the boys in his jazz band around.

I got into playing the jazz. I played jazz for a good while. I did the popular stuff first. You got the "Twelfth Street Rag" and those kinds of things. Then I got to hanging around with a bunch of guys starting to playing jazz. We'd go from one place to the other and take our instruments, just perform for free.

The guys in my band are good friends on and off the stage. The band members that I have now is probably the best band that I have ever had.

When I was a kid, my friends and I formed a band, Trombone Shorty's Brass Band. When I was six, I was a bandleader for my brother's band.

The Smashing Pumpkins was never meant to be a small band. It was going to either be a big band, or a no band.

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.

Certain music, jazz in particular, has the ability to make you a better citizen of the world. It helps you expand your world view and gives you more confidence in your cultural achievements. Improvisational jazz teaches you about yourself while the swing in jazz teaches you how to work with others

I've had experiences where people say, 'I hated jazz before I heard you guys!' I'm like, 'You didn't hate jazz before you heard us, you hated the idea of jazz.'

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.

I mean, I think I liked every band I ever played in because each band was different, each band had a different concept, and each band leader was different... different personalities and musical tastes.

I'm not a jazz artist. Don't get me wrong now, it's all music to me. I just played music and if it's likeable, someone liked the sound, then fine, but I'm not interested in being a jazz musician. I don't consider myself a jazz musician. I don't have anything to do with that word.

We get along, we talk music.Lenny Kravitz took me to Harlem to see this little jazz show in the back of a church. It was just shitty fluorescent lights and a small stage piano, but this band tore it up.

We're having a hard time understanding where jazz is going. What happened to jazz?

I shined off high school band, marching, jazz studies. At the time I was too cool for school, I had this professional gig and I was going home taking a shower and heading to downtown Hawaii, Waikiki.

I listened to classical music. I listened to jazz. I listened to everything. And I started becoming interested in the sounds of jazz. And I went to a concert of Jazz at the Philharmonic when we lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and I saw Charlie Parker play and Billie Holiday sing and Lester Young play, and that did it. I said, 'That's what I want to do.'

If I'm not a jazz player all the time, I've at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.

Jazz is a music that really allows a person to express his deepest self, his most personal self - Africa being the primary source of jazz. Naturally, improvisation and swing are a part of jazz, improvisation being the key.

My mother was into opera and my father was into jazz, so there was a lot of jazz in the house where I grew up.

My sister loved country music. My mother loved Spanish music. And my dad was into big band music and jazz.

I find as much inspiration from the forerunners of jazz as I do the modern-day innovators of jazz.

My favorite band was The Band, and nobody compares in my mind with The Band.

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.

I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.

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.

I don't think I've ever been true to jazz. There's always a kind of jazz element to what I do. There are a very few genres that I haven't tried out, really, in what I've been doing. As a jazz musician, you can kind of mess about with things with a certain level of musicianship, which helps.

I feel more confident about what we're doing as a band and what we're trying to do as a band and the way we're looking at it as a band.

I always told the people at Cal Arts that if they wanted me to do Jazz studies, first of all, there couldn't be a big band within 500 miles and that I could do what I wanted to do. And they said I could.

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.

Charlie Parker was the greatest individual musician that ever lived. Every instrument in the band tried to copy Charlie Parker, and in the history of jazz there had never been one man who influenced all the instruments.

I said that the only way I could have a band that would work in the format of my show is if the band were crap. So if I have a band they'd have to really suck.

Jazz is a constant theme in my life. My father is a jazz pianist, and from an early age I have been surrounded by it.

I'm a jazz musician, and I really wanted to not miss an opportunity to have the full connection to jazz.

Jazz was always cool. That was what I liked about jazz - it was always cool. Now I see the cats that were basically cool getting kind of uncool. So that ruins what I feel about jazz.

I do not want and will not take a royalty on any record I record. I think paying a royalty to a producer or engineer is ethically indefensible. The band write the songs. The band play the music. It's the band's fans who buy the records. The band is responsible for whether it's a great record or a horrible record. Royalties belong to the band. I would like to be paid like a plumber. I do the job and you pay me what it's worth.

But sometimes that title 'jazz' can vex people who think they know exactly what jazz always is and will be.

I was brought up in a house with a lot of appreciation for music, all kinds of music, including jazz. But I never knew that it could really be a career. I didn't know any jazz singers. I never saw live jazz. I only heard these records.

That's what it is-it's jazz. It's just jazz. That's what the whole thing is about to me. It's about what's happening right now in this context. This conversation is jazz to a certain extent. It's improvisation. What appeals to me about music is the improvization. That's what I don't like about the media-they're not living it.

Just figure out what you think jazz is, and then if it fits into that category, it's jazz, and if it doesn't, it isn't. It's no big deal.

I know what it takes to make a band, how they should interact, what makes a record sound like it's a band - everything having to do with a band, I happen to be into.

Jazz is a music of great achievements but speed and chops serve a different function in jazz.