Top 1200 Jazz Hands Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

From it's inception Beat poetry was hailed as "something NEW" and "like all good spontaneous jazz, newness is acceptable and expected - by hip people who listen." But the newness of jazz has in it the echoes of J. S. Bach.

Jazz has always been my first love. It has this timeless effect on me. It's pretty odd that I didn't become a jazz musician. I went another way because I needed to earn a good living to support my large family.

I cringed when I heard myself described as a Jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a Jazz vocalist.

What has been America's most nurturing contribution to the culture of this planet so far? Many would say jazz. I, who love jazz, will say this instead: Alcoholics Anonymous.

What 'jazz' means to me is the worst kind of working conditions, the worst in cultural prejudice. The term 'jazz' has come to mean the abuse and exploitation of black musicians.

I couldn't get my album played over the so-called smooth jazz stations. Jazz stations would not play it. You don't always know who you're making that soul connection with.

My mother was a jazz fanatic and she wanted me to play the piano so I could play jazz tunes. I wish I had learned but I was too busy getting into trouble!

I don't like heroin, unless you're a jazz musician and then you have to be on it because jazz is the sound of heroin.

In New York, I was excited about the music in New York because the only music that I was more or less involved with in the South was either country and western or hillbilly music as we used to call it when I was a kid and, ah, gospel. There was no, there was no in between. And when I got to New York all the other musics that's in the world just came into my head whether it was the classics, jazz, I never knew what jazz was about all, had heard anything about jazz.

I grew up listening to John Coltrane and jazz, so they were subtle influences. I sometimes think about doing some kind of weird jazz record, but I don't know... It's on my list of things to do. I don't want to have to then go promote it.

Jazz is like a big secret club. The mainstream media doesn't pay any attention to it; it's, like, 1 percent of the music market - no one cares. Why? Because the majority of jazz is old.

Now, the instrumentation in the jazz band and the jazz dance band has gone through many evolutions. For instance, in the 'twenties the tradition was two or three saxophones

I've gotten bored with jazz to the point where I wouldn't mind something bad happening. Slapping hurts, but at some point it'll wake you up. I feel like jazz needs a big-ass slap.

The hands of those I meet are dumbly eloquent to me. The touch of some hands is an impertinence. I have met people so empty of joy, that when I clasped their frosty finger-tips, it seemed as if I were shaking hands with a northeast storm.

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.

You basically have to play everything (in New Orleans), because you're getting calls to play gigs of all different styles, from classical to R&B to funk; modern jazz to traditional jazz.

My genre of music is very eclectic. I might play some Latin jazz, or just go into a spontaneous jazz thing. That's the thing about coming to one of my performances. Not every show is the same.

Jazz is capable of doing much more than depicting the dope fiend and the drunk and the slinky gal. In our show there are many very funny sequences where we were able to use jazz as it can be used-in a happy way.

At this time the fashion is to bring something to jazz that I reject. They speak of freedom. But one has no right, under pretext of freeing yourself, to be illogical and incoherent by getting rid of structure and simply piling a lot of notes one on top of the other. There's no beat anymore. You can't keep time with your foot. I believe that what is happening to jazz with people like Ornette Coleman, for instance, is bad. There's a new idea that consists in destroying everything and find what's shocking and unexpected; whereas jazz must first of all tell a story that anyone can understand.

There was a time, from 1935-1946, when teenagers and young adults danced to jazz-orientated bands. When jazz orchestras dominated pop charts and when influential clarinettists were household names. This was the swing era.

I think the people who are saying jazz has to sound a particular way, or, 'What you're doing isn't jazz,' are just scared because they can't do it. A lot of them just aren't talented enough to do anything new, honestly.

I'd actually been making my living as an organist with bands since I was probably 15 or 16 years old, and then as a senior in high school I put together a jazz quintet called The Bobby Mack Jazz Quintet.

Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.

Now, the instrumentation in the jazz band and the jazz dance band has gone through many evolutions. For instance, in the 'twenties the tradition was two or three saxophones.

The history of jazz for the last 45 years has come through the Monterey Jazz Festival stages. I think there's developed a legacy and an aura around the festival.

Justin Di Cioccio led a jazz program at Music and Art, but there was no jazz in Performing Arts. After they joined, it became Laguardia School of Arts.

Jazz is like a big secret club. The mainstream media doesn't pay any attention to it, it's like 1 percent of the music market - no one cares. Why? Because the majority of jazz is old.

Robert Altman made that movie Kansas City about the jazz scene in the city, and we saw that band all together, and that was an amazing show. That's what I got into. I like jazz.

I'm comfortable singing jazz. The only thing I was concerned about is that everybody, even in jazz, has their own style. To me, the queen of doodling was Ella Fitzgerald, and scatting is something I never thought I could do.

Rock music was the death of jazz in a way. I know there's a bunch of people who say jazz isn't dead, but I mean, rock 'n roll, you play three chords to 20,000 people; jazz, you play 20,000 chords to three people.

Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz.

I was very lucky, because when I was at school, I had a great music teacher who would just take out these free-jazz records and play them for me. So it was in my early teens that I started to listen to jazz.

Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that's it. No America, no jazz. I've seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn't have a damn thing to do with Africa.

My band, Miles Long, is a jazz-funk spoken word band. There's jazz sensibilities, but I'm a bass player, so I'm very much into the head-bobbing vibe with sophisticated lyrics.

I mostly listen to very popular songs. But I'm a huge fan of Stevie Wonder, and I love jazz - Glenn Fredly, Diah Lestari - so 80% jazz, 20% mixed with everything - disco, hip hop.

When I began, poetry was very academic. You published little pamphlets from fancy presses. It was rather... chaste. There wasn't much public reading. Then there was poetry and jazz, which I don't think worked, though I love jazz.

My dad had two, sometimes three jobs. Besides running the Commodore Music Shop in Manhattan, he did jazz concerts, and he ran this great jazz label, Commodore.

I don't play the traditional Charlie Parker songs. But I do improvise and I do create with my instrument, and that to me is jazz. But there are people who use the word 'jazz' only in a traditional sense, and they would be offended by that, and that's fine.

People hear traditional jazz and think it's stale, where there are so many ways it can be opened up. With New Orleans and old-time grooves, there's no limit in what can be done with that. I want to break the stereotype of what traditional jazz is.

The job of the jazz people is to take it as far as it will go and that's what they're doing. But in the process of taking it out there, there has to be some times when they're not getting it right. It all depends on what you dig. I personally don't think the fusion of jazz with the heaviness of rock is working.

Everybody has the blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith. In music, especially this broad category called jazz, there is a stepping-stone to all of these.

If you look at Keith Richards' hands, from the Rolling Stones, they're these gnarled, arthritic - it looks like people beat his hands with clubs. It's amazing there's so much character in his hands.

Even though the music I make gathers influences from all over the place, I feel that the core of what I do comes from the jazz tradition. In terms of improvisation, interaction, feel and overall concept, Jazz is my main source of information and inspiration.

I love New Orleans. I love jazz. I grew up practicing jazz piano, and that's just been such a cool genre to me. There's a lot of talent there.

Trombone virtuoso and innovative composer, Papo combines the best of jazz and Latin music to create a genre that is unique and wild. He's redefined Latin jazz!

What happens when an art form becomes ambiguous, I think, is that the standards are lowered. You can say anything is jazz. So I think it's important to reflect on what made jazz so special.

Jazz was the beginning of rhythm music, which developed into rock and roll. But what the jazz musicians lost because they were so far from their homeland was the intricate rhythms of African music.

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.

It's a shame that jazz is now being turned into dried fruit. It's becoming quantized, diced and defined. It's becoming an idiom. To me if it's anything, jazz is a verb ? it's more like a process than it is a thing.

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.

The month of September is Women in Jazz, so I'm doing jazz there in September. I'm in for the duration.

I wake up late, say 10 or 11, because we've usually been out and about town until 2 or 3 A.M. listening to music at the jazz clubs or hitting the jazz clubs post-theater.

Jazz isn't as profitable for labels like Hip hop or Rap. Jazz needs subsidies to continue, just like European classical works of Bach and Beethoven are subsidized.

The only reason is that I hadn't seen The Modern Jazz Quartet perform live and a live performance is often where the real experience of jazz takes place. I'm not familiar with the Boswell Sisters.

The jazz and blues clubs are like the jazz and blues musicians - they're disappearing.

[Manhattan School Of Music] didn't' have a jazz undergraduate program at the time so I played a semester in the big band. There was a graduate program. But I wasn't really that involved in jazz yet.

Jazz needs the help. It's the more sophisticated music. All the other music is on the TV, but jazz isn't.

Improvisation was the blood and bone of jazz, and in the classic, New Orleans jazz it was collective improvisation in which each performer, seemingly going his own melodic way, played in harmony, dissonance, or counterpoint with the improvisations of his colleagues. Quite unlike ragtime, which was written down in many cases by its composers and could be repeated note for note (if not expression for expression) by others, jazz was a performer's not a composer's art.

My dad, was, by trade, he had a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. He's a huge, huge jazz fan. He used to travel all the time for projects, and he used to collect jazz records. He used to collect hundreds and hundreds of jazz records because he had this passion for it. That's kind of how they had certain hobbies together with my mom.

Until I was about 16 years old, my dream was to be a musician. I played in rock bands and jazz bands. Then I decided to be an actor and kept the stable career of 'jazz pianist' as my safety net.