Konitz Quotes

#1. Whenever I open a book about jazz, I turn to the index and look for Lennie Tristano, the incredible pianist; Lee Konitz, the luminous alto sax player; and Warne Marsh, the tenor player who captured some of the most beautiful sounds in the world.

Carolyn See

#2. Many people do think it's naive to improvise in front of paying customers. I'm not saying one way is better than another.

Lee Konitz

#3. Authors tell stories with "the express intention of wanting people to believe them, at least until the book is closed.

Elizabeth Edmonson

#4. We all learn from each other, and I never really hung out with guys in that way, so I missed out.

Lee Konitz

#5. A lot of bands were doing remotes from ballrooms around the country.

Lee Konitz

#6. Long before we've had a chance to become truly familiar with our loved one, we may be filled with the curious sense that we know them already. It can seem as though we've met them somewhere before, in a previous life, perhaps, or in our dreams.

Alain De Botton

#7. As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be some jazz.

Lee Konitz

#8. Sound is the first thing that we tune into.

Lee Konitz

#9. It was 100 percent music. There was no ego involved, no attitudes, no black and white, it was pure music.

Lee Konitz

#10. God will ignite all that was extinct in your life

Sunday Adelaja

#11. I understood that if I wanted to work, the saxophone was the main instrument. The clarinet was what we call a double.

Lee Konitz

#12. Most jazz players work out their solos, at least to the extent that they have a very specific vocabulary.

Lee Konitz

#13. Art is the attention we pay to the wholeness of the world.

Guy Davenport

#14. I am grateful to God for a second-chance to live my life to the fullness.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#15. A first love always occupies a special place.

Lee Konitz

#16. Out of Coltrane's whole history, there are things which I think are great from all the periods.

Lee Konitz

#17. It's very demanding to make up your own music.

Lee Konitz

#18. I just completed a tour in Europe. I played every night. This requires traveling some days for six hours in a van or a train or a car. After six weeks of that, I checked into the hotel and just fell apart.

Lee Konitz

#19. I could stop and say, Well that was a D minor, G seven, but I really don't want to know that. I just want to know that there's a combination of notes that makes a sound.

Lee Konitz

#20. I have been able to get a small audience. It's not the huge audience, but it's enough to make it possible to play. I appreciate that.

Lee Konitz

#21. You just keep playing. If someone special comes along and organizes it in a new way, then you'll have another approach and everybody will jump on it to try to learn.

Lee Konitz

#22. In some ways Lester Young is the most complex rhythmically of any musician. He does some things which are just phenomenal.

Lee Konitz

#23. After playing now for 60 years, it's still very challenging for me to play a simple melody and have it clean and touch the reed at the proper time in the proper way.

Lee Konitz

#24. Who I am, and what I am capable of doing has always managed to surprise me.

Jodi Picoult

#25. If you become the light of peace there will be no darkness of hatred.

Debasish Mridha

#26. Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet.

Lee Konitz

#27. The modern theory of evolution does not require gradual change. It in fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record. It is gradualism that we must reject, not Darwinism.

Stephen Jay Gould

#28. Here's Lego Zombie Chef! Here's Lego Zombie builder! See their grasping hands and posable limbs!

Kirsty McKay

#29. Her light shines through the tunnel to my heart, clenching every pulsing beat with radiance and luminosity.

Renee Ericson

#30. I wish that person outside would stop coughing.

Lee Konitz

#31. I listen to classical music very much. There's a lot of jazz that I don't enjoy listening to.

Lee Konitz

#32. I'd like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I've heard.

Lee Konitz

#33. Names and theoretical things don't occur to me. If they do, I'm not doing my real playing mode.

Lee Konitz

#34. I love Indian music very much, but I haven't studied that specifically.

Lee Konitz

#35. I always felt as a horn player, a jam session wasn't satisfying enough for me. I should have been a rhythm section player, actually.

Lee Konitz

#36. That's kind of my goal: to build a new row of meaningful tones.

Lee Konitz

#37. Bernstein grew up in my building in New York. He's a very, very fine player. When he was a kid, he came by to find out what was going on in the world of jazz.

Lee Konitz

#38. Labels don't mean anything to me. I'm trying to play as passionately as I'm able to. If they want to call that cool, that's fine. Just spell the name right, is the formula.

Lee Konitz