I played Big Band jazz music. I wasn't into rock and roll. I was just there because it was a living. I surprised everyone. I'm still surprising people.
I did ballet, jazz, and all that, but I think hip-hop is really where I learned rhythm and groove, which has helped me in music.
Any live venue where there is alcohol served and it's past midnight there is gonna be fights. It doesn't matter if it's Hip-Hop, Rock or Jazz.
The first time I heard a professional jazz quartet practicing in a house down the street it was almost like an out-of-body experience.
As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something thats never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.
There's more bad music in jazz than any other form. Maybe that's because the audience doesn't really know what's happening.
For me, I listened to a lot of female jazz artists. And of course, the Motown and Philly sounds, all that stuff was very influential. And church and gospel.
Yeah, I grew up doing ballet and jazz and tap, but I stopped at the age of 25, and I've never stepped foot in a ballroom.
Man, I just feel so fortunate to be a jazz musician at all. I have a hard time thinking of it any other way. It's such a fulfilling vocation. I love it.
I studied opera for a year at Georgia State University, but I wasn't interested in that meticulous, technical approach to music. So I left school and went back to jazz.
But if you listen to great piano players, both classical and jazz, theres a huge range of dynamics and colors and emotional expression thats possible with the instrument.
I do subscribe to the maxim that generally comedy is like jazz. Either you get it or you don't. You can't learn it and you can't be taught it. I don't think that if you are not a funny person, you can fake it.
In the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra we play such a diversity of music, with 10 arrangers in the band, we don't really worry about whether it's contemporary or not.
People recommended that I didn't sing at the school as a jazz major. So I sang and produced on my own time, but I didn't have a lot of support. I just did it anyway.
I suppose technically I could say I'm based in jazz, just because it's the school of thought that I've been encouraging myself to operate within.
Whatever it is, music should sound spontaneous, I've derived a great deal of pleasure from playing jazz and having the knowledge of that spontaneity.
Really, improv is all about creating for what's around you, in the moment, so it fits in a way that you can't see the seams. It's like a great jazz combo. I still do it.
I think myself, Jose James, and Robert Glasper are expanding the language - really reminding people that the umbrella of jazz is large and all-encompassing.
I have discovered three things which know no geographical borders - classical music, American jazz, and applause as the sign of the public's favor.
Jazz and blues fests are everywhere now, and Americana is going strong on college radio. What I'm hearing is an appreciation of real music.
My own Brubeck Institute in California is turning out fantastic young jazz players, and I know great things will happen.
Growing up, I listened to a lot of jazz and blues records - John Coltrane and Etta James. I was also really into Radiohead and the BeeGees.
I think people psych themselves out before they listen to jazz a lot, thinking that they have to, like, put on a suit or something. That's not what it is.
What I've been trying to do for years is to get the music played on a station other than jazz stations, you know, to expand the audience.
The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.
That's the exact concept behind the music: to take that kind of, I guess whatever you want to call it, jazz sensibility - but not have it be about solos.
Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
I did get to sing at Carnegie Hall when they were made Landmarks! I sang ALL THAT JAZZ with the NY Pops ...what a total thrill.
We want to show how hip-hop, which kind of fuels today's basketball stars, is directly related to jazz.
My father was a jazz listener, and I think, at least before I was 5, I was not so into that. Although there were records that emphasized percussion that I liked, like Baby Dodds.
I always dreamt of being in 'Kerrang.' That was my ambition. I read that religiously when I was into heavy metal. Then the jazz magazines took over.
I really like jazz and soul, but I also love so many other types of music, and I didn't want to be afraid to blend and experiment.
I looked back on the roaring Twenties, with its jazz, 'Great Gatsby' and the pre-Code films as a party I had somehow managed to miss.
Anyone who's just driven 90 yards against huge men trying to kill them has earned the right to do Jazz hands.
Jazz was formerly a crude term for indulging in an action which in polite society is referred to, if at all, only with such vague Latin terms as intercourse and cohabitation.
The musicians in Chicago gave me my vocation, but New York calls to a jazz musician, for sure. You want to test your mettle.
As my career has progressed, I've had the pleasure of playing with the baddest jazz cats on the planet. But that doesn't change my desire to entertain folks. That's really who I am.
But if you listen to great piano players, both classical and jazz, there's a huge range of dynamics and colors and emotional expression that's possible with the instrument.
New Orleans jazz is a complex and embracing art form that began about the same time as the blues and encompassed many of its excellences.
There's so much around, you don't know what to listen to. All I've got at home is Bo Diddley, some Stones and Beatles stuff, and old jazz records.
I was in a competing company and have been dancing since I was four - ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop - so it's a huge part of my life and my music.
In the last few years I've been listening to jazz more than anything else. I listen to a lot of world music and experimental here and there.
Jazz doesn't have much to do with how I write songs, but I am a big fan. My favorites are Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal, and Mose Allison.
As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.
My dad was a drummer for The Mamas & The Papas, and his mother was in the jazz world, so music has always been very much in my blood.
Jazz is for joy. It's for euphoria, it's for emotion, and anguish, and excitement, and all of the joys that great art can produce, and if it loses that, then it's lost everything.
If income was directly proportional to technical proficiency and education, classical and jazz musicians would be some of the most affluent people in the world.
Given the hipness of transsexualism with people like Caitlyn Jenner and Jazz Jennings, there might be a third category, especially among children, and that is fashion.
The symphonic orchestras have sponsors, people who give them endowments, and I think it should be the same way with jazz - because this is a national treasure.
Playing the sax and then enjoying jazz music man. It's like I learned how to find words inside of the beat.
I went to a Catholic high school, and I was super rebellious. I would dress weird or play jazz. I was definitely pushing against whatever was going on.
If it comes out sounding like Dixieland jazz or classical or punk or rock or even slightly metal, that's because that's where I'm going to find inspiration.
My roots and Victor's are jazz, basically, but these two young fellows that we have with us come out of rock bands. And they're tremendously exciting players.
What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.
Thelma and I are excited to work with UMSL around our shared passion for jazz and education and make this initial investment to establish the institute.
Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact.
I've often felt I've been born out of my time, and when I started Fairground Attraction in the 1980s, I wanted to be a 1940s jazz singer.
I guess I learnt to appreciate old Hindi-movie music from my dad and somewhere down the line picked up jazz as well.
Four Tet is somebody I respect a lot. There are other artists I admire like jazz pianist and composer Marc Moulin.
Kansas City Lightning succeeds as few biographies of jazz musicians have. . . This book is a magnificent achievement; I could hardly put it down.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience.
More info...