Top 1200 Playing Jazz Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

Dave's playing and repertoire evokes memories of the golden era of Modern Jazz, and in addition to being a nice guy he happens to be a bebopper of the finest order.

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.

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.

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

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

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.'

Jazz is a music of great achievements but speed and chops serve a different function in 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 ballet and pointe work. I also do tap, commercial jazz and technical jazz, freestyle street dancing.

Jazz, of course, is our heritage. Jazz is a culture, it's not a fad. It's up to us to see to it that it stays alive.

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.

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.

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

Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz.

I grew up in a jazz household. They made me listen to jazz before I could hear my Motown.

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.

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

You can start from any source material, and you can approach it with a jazz ear, and then it will become a jazz moment.

I grew up around jazz. I love jazz.

Playing solo with an audience for an hour and 30 minutes without a break means I have to, as the jazz cats say, get into the shed and work on my chops.

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

There are a million examples of not feeling the jazz, but using the jazz.

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.'

Playing the sax and then enjoying jazz music man. It's like I learned how to find words inside of the beat.

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.

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.'

For me, great jazz records really feel like everyone in the room is playing together in a zone - and all the musicians are completely in sync with each other.

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

If a jazz player is really playing, the classical player will have to respect him.

I got my love of jazz from my stepfather, who was a jazz musician.

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

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

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

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

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

Childhood, all me influences were, say, between the time that I can remember, which would have been about three years old to the time that I was about five or six years old, all the music that I ever heard was jazz and it was American jazz, and it was big-band jazz, to be more defined.

I started playing trumpet when I was 11 years old. All I wanted to be was a jazz trumpet player when I grew up.

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

Jazz and Cuba are inexorably tied together; it's not a branch from a tree. Latin music is part of the root of jazz.

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.

Jazz can accommodate so many things. Jazz is like the universe: it's been expanding since its creation, and it's connected to everything.

So I went into jazz and performed in jazz clubs all over the country.

I have a fondness for jazz, particularly for jazz singers, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald all the way through the Sinatra era.

Playing the sax and then enjoying jazz music, man - it's like I learned how to find words inside of the beat.

It's been thrown up to me most of my life: Why don't I just concentrate on conducting or composing or my own playing or on jazz?

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.

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

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.

As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.

Jazz is not just 'Well, man, this is what I feel like playing.' It's a very structured thing that comes down from a tradition and requires a lot of thought and study.

If I am playing any music at all it is jazz music.

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

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.

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

I think jazz is a phenomenal creative force, because it's one man, one vote as you're playing, but it's a collective thing, what you're doing. You're listening to all the musicians around you and you're working within that structure.

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 was three or four, and my mother would have a Bing Crosby record playing through the house. It was my introduction to jazz, harmonies, melodies, musicianship, and emotion.

I don't know why people call me a jazz singer, though I guess people associate me with jazz because I was raised in it, from way back. I'm not putting jazz down, but I'm not a jazz singer...I've recorded all kinds of music, but (to them) I'm either a jazz singer or a blues singer. I can't sing a blues – just a right-out blues – but I can put the blues in whatever I sing. I might sing 'Send In the Clowns' and I might stick a little bluesy part in it, or any song. What I want to do, music-wise, is all kinds of music that I like, and I like all kinds of music.

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

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