Top 100 Jazz's Quotes
#1. It is Jazz's very nature to change, to develop & adapt to the circumstances of its environment.
Pat Metheny
#2. In a way, the history of jazz's development is a small mirror of classical music's development through the centuries. Now jazz is a living form of original music, while classical music has gotten to the end of its cycle in terms of exploring its form.
Mike Figgis
#3. Since about 1980 Kenny Werner has been one of jazz's unsung heroes
Harvey Pekar
#4. This assignment could damn well project all the words across my face and the ink stain my hands a gory mess before I finished it.
Jazz Feylynn
#5. I'm not supposed to be playing, the music is supposed to be playing me. I'm just supposed to be standing there with the horn, moving my fingers. The music is supposed to be coming through me; that's when it's really happening.
Sonny Rollins
#6. I always thought that as much as I love 'White Jazz,' it became almost unfilmable at some point, because there are so many strands, so much, and it became so psychotic ... that's what made it such a great book, but those things would not carry over into the filmic realm, I thought, with ease.
Joe Carnahan
#7. Anyone who understands Jazz knows that you can't understand it. It's too complicated. That's what's so simple about it.
Yogi Berra
#8. There's more bad music in jazz than any other form. Maybe that's because the audience doesn't really know what's happening.
Pat Metheny
#9. 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.
Sheila E.
#10. I think the challenges for me was to go into the studio with these incredible jazz players and come up to their level of excellence. That's always a challenge.
Rita Coolidge
#11. I'm moved by a lot of different kinds of music, whether it's pop music or R&B or straight-ahead jazz or free or opera or music from all parts of the world.
David Sanborn
#12. If the average jazz artist uses his head and at the outset of his career realizes he won't play as well at fifty as he does at twenty-five, he won't be in a line-up outside the Salvation Army when he's fifty.
Oscar Peterson
#13. The difference between blues, jazz, rock n' roll and rap is that rap stayed poor. Even the white rappers are poor. It's scarier to look at poor people; it makes everyone uncomfortable. Their pain is something that people would like to see swept under the rug.
Russell Simmons
#14. I don't want to do free jazz! Because free jazz - which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering - isn't actually free at all. It's just constrained by what your muscles can do.
Brian Eno
#15. Science teachers and the mentally ill, that's all Jazz is for.
Noel Fielding
#16. One thing that sticks in my mind is that jazz means freedom and openness. It's a music that, although it developed out of the African American experience, speaks more about the human experience than the experience of a particular people.
Herbie Hancock
#17. Dali's Reclining Woman Wearing a Chemise looks like a dead slaughtered doll, and I can see preying eagles, broken arrows, and jazz musicians in Jackson Pollock, and because I believe that Man Ray and Duchamp were lovers.
Dionne Brand
#18. 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.
Paul Desmond
#19. I don't know who's 18 years old today that, 20 years hence, is going to be a jazz fan.
Norman Granz
#20. Dizzy Gillespie, the jazz trumpet player, once said, "It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play." He was one of my special ones. And he was quite correct. Silence enhances music. What you do not play can sweeten what you do. But
Mitch Albom
#21. It's not jazz as we know jazz here in America.
Les Paul
#22. My primary influences were the best jazz players from the 50's and 60's and later some of the pop people from the same time period along with the better of the well known blues musicians.
Walter Becker
#23. Music is what you notice when it's no longer in your presence ...
Pat Metheny
#24. I have truly eclectic taste in music, and I seem to cycle through phases in terms of to what's inspiring me. I'll go from Beethoven to Sigur Ros; world music, Brit-pop, classic rock, blues/jazz, even the odd bit of heavy metal.
Rachel Miner
#25. I mix everything up. A museum curator once said to me that there is a great jazz component to the way I do things because good jazz is improvisation and draws elements from all different cultures. And that's the way I do everything - the way I dress and decorate.
Iris Apfel
#26. There's the tradition in jazz of having the Battle of the Bands, and you do not want to get your head cut when you're playing.
Wynton Marsalis
#27. It's a weird thing where, especially in jazz, you have to totally mention cutting sessions and people one-upping each other and people being super, super tough on each other. And out of it emerge these genius musicians.
Damien Chazelle
#28. Both the nationalists and the communists disapproved of jazz and feared it. They thought it would weaken people's resolve to fight off the invasion. And most Americans know, China did ban all Western music for about 30 years, starting in 1949. This is where it started.
Nicole Mones
#29. I love dancing, actually. My mother taught children's dance, ballet, tap, jazz ... I'm very flexible.
Michael Angarano
#30. Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.
Dave Brubeck
#31. I've got my own studio, and I've got four- to five-hundred unreleased tracks. I've got stuff that's electronic, orchestral, jazz, I've got rock, I've got metal, you know, I don't have polka.
Serj Tankian
#32. It's certainly no coincidence that big bands became the entertainment of the army in WWI and WWII, and that jazz drumming style is very military influenced. The snare drum comes from the military and becomes the core kind of sound of jazz drums.
Damien Chazelle
#33. I've always wanted to record a jazz record. I did one in the '70s with Barbara Carroll. It's been a journey.
Rita Coolidge
#34. But no one, when you stop to think, has ever equated abstract expressionism as a movement with jazz music. It's based on improvisation. The rhythms, the personal involvement, all of this is part of the jazz experience.
Romare Bearden
#35. 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.
Chico Hamilton
#36. 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.
Chris Cortez
#37. 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.
Kenny G
#38. To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.
Nina Simone
#39. What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.
Branford Marsalis
#40. I hate Stanley Clark, but I have to admit he's playing Jazz whether I like it or not.
Lester Bangs
#41. You always come back to Duke Ellington - he's kind of like the thread that holds everything together from the big band descending to lots of jazz, actually.
Herbert
#42. What I love about Sonny's playing is that he is so inventive within the mainstream Jazz vernacular. Because he knows so many ways to deal with musical material, he is never repetitive and hasn't had to invent a new language. Also, he never asked me to do anything but swing!
Pete La Roca
#43. Yeah, equal pay for equal work and our bodies ourselves and Gloria Steinem and all that jazz ... but in that dusty dark little corner of every woman's heart where we keep our maps of Tierra del Fuego lives the hunger to fetch a powerful man his slippers on her hands and knees.
Tiffany Reisz
#44. What I believe to be jazz is constructed and improvised music which is in the air right now. But I don't think that's most people's definition of jazz, you know? We don't know what we're talking about, because we don't know the definition.
John Lurie
#45. Lately, my mind is like an orchestra. If you don't have the conductor, you don't know what to do. One guy is playing jazz, one guy is playing rock and roll, another classical. It's a big mess.
Goran Ivanisevic
#46. It's not easy to play in a framework that requires simplicity and to tastefully find ways to interject the kind of freedom that we have in playing jazz.
Herbie Hancock
#47. That's the beautiful thing about the saxophone. It can peacefully coexist with just about anything - whether it's hip-hop, rap, rock music, pop, R&B or jazz, there's a place for the saxophone in all of those styles.
Dave Koz
#48. People think it is all about country music, and I know a lot of country music has come out of there, but like Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dillon was recorded there. A lot of great records; R&B records, jazz records. It's a lot of great players and great studios.
Elvis Costello
#49. 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.
Allen Ginsberg
#50. I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It's not like I'm cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do.
Carlos Santana
#51. The philosophy of jazz represents tolerance, teamwork and inclusion. That's what America is about. The music reflects that.
T. S. Monk
#52. How can music without any words make you think? I listen to jazz when I'm doing something else. I use it for background music, I don't just sit down and concentrate on it. Lyrics, words - that's what makes me think.
Eddie Murphy
#53. I believe in dressing for the occasion. There's a time for sweater, sneakers and Levis and a time for the full-dress jazz.
Ginger Rogers
#54. I'm mostly a jazz fan and I've never really been into rock 'n' roll music - although I guess Coldplay isn't really rock 'n' roll - but he's made me a convert. I do go to their concerts whenever we're in the same town and I don't even have to wear earplugs any more, which I did in the beginning.
Blythe Danner
#55. Kansas City, I would say, did more for jazz music, black music, than any other influence at all. Almost all their joints that they had there, they used black bands. Most musicians who amounted to anything, they would flock to Kansas City because that's the place where jobs were plentiful.
Jesse Stone
#56. Jazz music is as American as it gets, and so is the U.S. Postal Service. A Miles Davis stamp is a perfect marriage of two great American institutions.
Henry Rollins
#57. The best of humanity's recorded history is a creative balance between horrors endured and victories achieved, and so it was during the Harlem Renaissance.
Aberjhani
#58. I would love to make a real jazz album someday because I never have. But that's something I'm not in a rush to do.
Norah Jones
#59. Okay, I know she thinks her little bro stinks but that sounds like she's tracking him by his stench.
Jazz Feylynn
#60. Flexibility is an essential part of Jazz. It's what gives Jazz music the ability to combine with all other types of music and not lose its identity.
Wynton Marsalis
#61. 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.
Nick Kroll
#62. I know it sounds silly, but it takes some time getting used to all the cameras in your face. I think it's like playing jazz. After I learn the rules, I can have fun and play a little bit.
Monica Raymund
#63. Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.
Steve Lacy
#64. A spiritual journey is becoming what one has always meant to be-come and always was. One with God's Spirit.
Jazz Feylynn
#65. Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you that music has boundaries. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
Charlie Parker
#66. Jazz is very important. It's not something I can put my finger on. When I'm writing at my favorite time, I like to have the gentle side of Coltrane or Brubeck on the CD player. It creates sort of a spiritual space in which I write best.
Miller Williams
#67. Orchestras are not used to playing the kind of stuff jazz musicians like to play. It requires a lot of rehearsal and recording time, so it's much easier to do on a synth or sampler. So, we came up with that idea.
Eberhard Weber
#68. Ed gives him a dirty look. Leo grins. Dylan twitches. It feels like something's going on, I think loudly, and I know that Jazz hears my thought because she gives me her serious look and blows a chewing-gum bubble in my direction.
Cath Crowley
#69. We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it's opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There's so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones.
Patti Smith
#70. I think that's what I love about jazz is that you can do what you want, and you're allowed to mess up.
Rebecca Ferguson
#71. [David] Bowie's last album "Blackstar" featured him backed by a jazz quartet.
David Bowie
#72. Acting is like music and you improvise. It's like jazz, there's no rhyme or reason to it. It's not a plan. You practice to music and you just play it.
Denzel Washington
#73. Krupa's drums went through us like a triple bourbon.
Eddie Condon
#74. I came to Berklee to study guitar, I really wanted to be a jazz guitarist, and I really came because I really wanted to come for Pat Metheny, and then when I get to Berklee, there's no Pat Metheny, he's not there, and so now what do I do?
Juan Luis Guerra
#75. I think everybody has to kind of decide what the word 'jazz' means to them, and that's fine.
Kenny G
#76. There's this certain caliber of dancing I was striving for when I was younger, and it's very hard for me to go back and just do it for fun. But I take all other kinds of classes: I take jazz classes, modern classes, and I love doing that instead of going to the gym. The gym is not very much fun.
Summer Glau
#77. 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.
Tinashe
#79. I can turn on some jazz guitarist, and he won't do a thing for me, if he's not playing electrically. But Jeff Beck's great to listen to.
Ritchie Blackmore
#80. You get this really cool groove when you're playing just piano, bass, and drums where everyone's sort of feeling each other's space, which is the only way to put it, but it really is true, and everyone's sort of sitting in their own pocket. It's kind of jazz-like.
John Darnielle
#81. He's not a performer, he's not a composer, he's not even a musician, but Norman Granz is Mr. Jazz.
Oscar Peterson
#83. "Cannonball Adderley said, 'First 20 minutes we'll jazz out, then the last hour it's gonna be songs that people paid to see.' Which is why he was driving a Rolls-Royce."
Robert Glasper
#84. I love Rihanna's new album, Skrillex, and Norah Jones. They're are all very different, but I love any rock, pop, and jazz.
Ashley Benson
#85. 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.
Slaine
#86. Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread
without it, it's flat.
Carmen McRae
#87. I was interested in the ways that artists responded to totalitarianism - the Czech Jazz Section, Romanian absurdist theatre, Brecht's alienation effect. The anything-goes, anarchic qualities of jazz and Surrealism seemed to offer a way to cross some of the forbidden frontiers of Eastern Europe.
Nicholas Royle
#88. Maybe that's why the Westmores never allowed any pets. Hard to keep them off the menu.
Jazz Feylynn
#89. I've never listened to jazz. It's just not something I ever paid attention to.
Oprah Winfrey
#90. You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That's jazz.
Oscar Peterson
#91. I don't limit my taste. There's some jazz that I like and there's some opera. I've been listening to what was essentially country music, but it crossed over to rock.
Rick Moranis
#92. The jazz chord substitutions in a country song ... that was another thing that bent people's ears. I guess that my favorites are the unique ones. It's not how fast you play. It's that unique blending of different stuff I'm most proud of.
Brian Setzer
#93. 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.
Charlie Haden
#94. If it has more than three chords, it's jazz.
Lou Reed
#95. 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.
Kim Gordon
#96. I think we as human beings need to be able to appreciate each other's differences and I think jazz really takes us in that direction.
Herb Alpert
#97. That's kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You're out there predicting the future, and no one believes you.
Branford Marsalis
#98. I listen to classical music very much. There's a lot of jazz that I don't enjoy listening to.
Lee Konitz
#99. One thing I like about jazz, kid, is that I don't know what's going to happen next. Do you?
Bix Beiderbecke
#100. I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground.
John McLaughlin
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
