Top 91 Playing Jazz Quotes
#1. I started off with classical music, and I got into jazz when I was about 14 years old. And I've been playing jazz ever since.
Herbie Hancock
#2. As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.
Stan Getz
#3. He defined the state as being so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost.
Steven Kotler
#4. Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.
B.B. King
#5. Who knows ... we'll be playing Jazz and having a good time!
Art Blakey
#6. Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there's a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music.
Toots Thielemans
#7. When you're playing jazz, you have to somehow overcome that feeling of being intimidated because your aim is to portray that freedom in what you're playing.
Buddy DeFranco
#8. Growing up playing jazz and improvising has had a big impact on me, and it translates into my music.
Stephen Bruner
#9. Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#10. Around age 11 or 12, I started playing jazz bass. From there, I went to electric bass and then guitar, which I kept up for a long time.
Joshua Roman
#11. I started playing jazz by slowing down Tal Farlow records and analyzing his runs
Lenny Breau
#12. You know, it's funny ... when you're making money, people don't think you're playing jazz. Now when you're not making money, people think that you're a good jazz musician.
Pete Fountain
#13. Just because I'm playing Jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through Jazz.
Charles Mingus
#14. The reward for playing jazz is playing jazz.
John Lewis
#15. ...teaching is like playing jazz. Even if you perform the same number over and over, it never comes out the same twice, and you don't know exactly how it will sound until you hear it. Teaching is like writing with your voice
Earl R. Babbie
#16. I hate Stanley Clark, but I have to admit he's playing Jazz whether I like it or not.
Lester Bangs
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. The radio is playing jazz, and I listen to the sound of the trumpet playing a solo until I become that sound.
Joy Harjo
#21. I studied the lives of jazz singers who would tour Europe, and ... what I learned was life was big ride for them. They'd seen the dark side of humanity ... but touring the world playing jazz, it was a truly carefree way of living. A great escapism, if you like.
Gary Carr
#22. If you're making money people don't think you're playing Jazz. When you're not making money they think you're a great Jazz musician.
Pete Fountain
#23. If you're an impressionistic painter and you want to paint expressionism, you've got to change. You've got to figure out a way to do it and do it. If you've been playing jazz all your life and you want to start to play rock n' roll, blues, then do it.
Tobin Bell
#24. I didn't plan on rock-n-roll. I wanted to learn jazz; I got to know some people doing rock-n-roll with jazz, and I thought I could make some money playing music.
Robby Krieger
#25. I started out playing traditional jazz, and I still do: I love standards, I love the music. But it must move on, and it must live and breathe, and continue to grow, and continue to change, and continue to mesh with other music - all that kind of stuff. Jazz can be on the playground too, you know.
Robert Glasper
#26. If you play jazz, then you play with your fingers. If you're playing rock, you use a pick. There's really no rhyme or reason to that other than that's just the way it has been.
Kevin Eubanks
#27. I was a kid living in New Jersey, who - I'd wanted to make movies since I was a little kid, so that came before music for me. But I started playing drums just as a hobby, and I wasn't even really into jazz that much.
Damien Chazelle
#28. I've had the pleasure of playing with the baddest Jazz cats on the planet.
George Benson
#29. Most of the stuff I learned to play, I learned in high school. I had a band in high school, a jazz-fusion thing, and I was the keyboard player. I was interested in how the instruments worked and the theory behind playing with them.
Brian McKnight
#31. I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.
Amy Tan
#32. Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another theme, incorporating it, somehow trying to work their way all together to a meaning of some kind, or at least a conclusion.
Alan Arkin
#33. 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.
Herb Alpert
#34. I anticipated all the changes in jazz because they were all problematical things, that I was dealing with myself. In New York in the late '50s, there were a lot of experiments being made on how to avoid playing popular standards and how to get improvising out of those constricting formats.
Paul Bley
#35. I started playing trumpet when I was 11 years old. All I wanted to be was a jazz trumpet player when I grew up.
Flea
#36. I can only be me. I do what I do, I'm not a jazz player ... I don't play jazz standards, at least not in any recognizable way. It's not my turf but I have plenty of respect for that style of playing.
Jorma Kaukonen
#37. I had 12 years of classical music as a child, playing piano competitions as a teenager, playing in blues bands and rock 'n' roll bands, country and jazz bands. I played in about any situation.
Ronnie Milsap
#38. The summer before my third year of law school, I worked at a law firm in Washington, D.C. I turned 25 that July, and on my birthday, my father happened to be playing in a local jazz club called Pigfoot and invited me to join him. I hadn't spent a birthday with him since I was 3, but I agreed.
Deval Patrick
#39. I love all types of music. Jazz, classical, blues, rock, hip-hop. I often write scripts to instrumentals like a hip-hop artist. Music inspires me to write. It's either music playing or completely silent. Sometimes distant sound fuels you. In New York there's always a buzzing beneath you.
Chadwick Boseman
#40. There are any number of players with extensive jazz backgrounds who haven't been able to fit into other styles," "It all boils down to taste, to playing what's appropriate for the context in which you're working.
Larry Carlton
#41. I was pretty much prepared because I was already playing in extremely good ways when I arrived from Europe because I played jazz four or five years before I arrived here.
Miroslav Vitous
#42. If I am playing any music at all it is jazz music.
Ginger Baker
#43. In the early days of jazz, it was ensemble music: everybody playing all together. Nobody really stood out.
Terry Teachout
#45. 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.
George Benson
#46. I could hear music playing in the background of works by certain authors, like Poe and Shakespeare. And I discovered Nikki Giovanni when I was in eighth grade. Her writing has a musical energy with pulse and rhythm, almost like jazz or hip-hop.
Jill Scott
#47. 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.
Wynton Marsalis
#48. When I was playing piano, it was like, 'I'm going to write a song using all the white keys.' My music director, who knew my jazz background, suggested I try big-band music, so we spent a year experimenting with it in concert, and the audience reaction was really good.
John Tesh
#49. To me, Bill's musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.
Robert Fripp
#50. Anything you are shows up in your music - jazz is whatever you are, playing yourself, being yourself, letting your thoughts come through.
Mary Lou Williams
#51. You have to enjoy playing. The old-timers did, and that's one reason why their music is a lasting music. I feel that I play jazz to entertain the listener, and you just can't do that unless you yourself are entertained at the same time.
Barry Harris
#52. And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it.
Wynton Marsalis
#53. People like Art Blakey and Buddy Rich, you look at them playing music, and it's just like looking at a heavy metal drummer. I mean, they're playing with the same amount of ferocity. It's not to say all jazz is like that.
Damien Chazelle
#54. The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous.
Dave Brubeck
#55. I've played drums since I was 15. My sisters and I all played instruments. I kind of started with piano and then I actually played saxophone with a jazz band in middle school. So, any knowledge I had of jazz music was from playing alto-sax back then.
Miles Teller
#56. I've learnt new scales through playing different types of music, like Indian raga scales, gipsy scales and harmonically-based jazz scales.
Nigel Kennedy
#57. If a jazz player is really playing, the classical player will have to respect him.
Wes Montgomery
#58. I enjoy playing clubs. I still enjoy the closeness of the nightclub venue. However, after a certain period of time and after playing around some of the clubs in New YorkI felt that jazz should be presented in a more prestigious atmosphere.
Sonny Rollins
#59. I spent five years, at least, working with Miles. Together, we recorded ESP, Nefertiti, Sorcerer
and I can tell you; each of these albums instantly became jazz classics. Hey, we had Wayne Shorter playing tenor sax, Ron [Carter] on bass, Tony Williams played drums. That was great band we had.
Herbie Hancock
#60. Even though I'm a jazz-trained drummer, I cut my teeth playing rock.
Jimmy Chamberlin
#61. 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
#62. The Meters are, I think, the most influential group in our time to come out of New Orleans, to have changed and introduced us all to a way of playing, and to a groove and a level of feel in playing funk-jazz.
John Scofield
#64. 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
#65. I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast.
Paul Desmond
#66. If it hadn't worked out professionally, I would be teaching music theory and composition in a small college somewhere and playing drums in a jazz trio at the Holiday Inn on weekends, and I'd be happy there, too.
J. D. Souther
#67. Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing.
Oscar Peterson
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.
Miles Davis
#71. Around middle school I studied jazz guitar and ended up playing in a jazz band for a bit. But, after high school, I haven't even touched a guitar.
Mike Tucker
#72. I'm very influenced by jazz drummers. I always liked drummers like Roger Taylor, Keith Moon, Ian Paice, John Densmore. I just learned from playing to those drummers.
Steven Adler
#73. Many jazz artists go to L.A. seeking a more comfortable life and then they really stop playing.
Sonny Rollins
#74. 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
#75. I like jazz, but I could never play it. You just sit there with a guitar the size of a Chevy on your chest, wearing a stupid hat, playing the same solo for an hour.
Dave Mustaine
#76. Some people say there was no jazz tenor before me. All I know is I just had a way of playing and I didn't think in terms of any other instrument but the tenor.
Coleman Hawkins
#77. People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play.
Roy Ayers
#78. I was always very leery of my piano playing. As a young kid, I wanted to be a jazz musician, but my taste was far greater than my ability.
Mike Stoller
#79. Whenever you study composition you inevitably encounter Bach right off the bat. You can't get across the room without running into him and the other greats. Analyzing Bach absolutely influenced my jazz playing.
Howard Roberts
#80. You have to go out and learn jazz by playing.
Paul Horn
#81. Personally, I think young musicians need to learn to play more than one style. Jazz can only enhance the classical side, and classical can only enhance the jazz. I started out playing classical, because you have to have that as a foundation.
Doc Severinsen
#82. As I've grown older I've been more influenced by more meandering styles of guitar playing, whether it's Celtic or Ethiopian folk music or some kind of noisier jazz like Sonny Sharrock. In terms of songwriting, I don't know that I could even pin it down.
Ted Leo
#83. One thing about playing the real jazz is that you can't count it.
Mahalia Jackson
#84. Now listen for your song. Everybody's got a song. When I used to chase the Trane - John Coltrane that is - he used to tell me, 'If I know a man's sound, I know the man.' Do you hear the melody playing in your mind? Does it move you, nudge you off your seat?
David Mutti Clark
#86. My early influences were the Shadows, who were an English instrumental band. They basically got me into playing and later on I got into blues and jazz players. I liked Clapton when he was with John Mayall. I really liked that period.
Tony Iommi
#87. There are a few things that I will hopefully be credited for as a pioneer. One is my four-mallet playing. Another one is the starting what was first called jazz rock in 1967 when I started my first band, later became jazz fusion by the 1970s.
Gary Burton
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. Jazz should be recognized as music of the people, based in a lot of accents and melodies. What is jazz but music that people danced to? Jazz has the dynamic thing. I don't think you have to be playing only Charlie Parker licks on your horn or whatever the new version of that is.
Al Jarreau
#91. You never get it figured out. You just keep playing.
David Sanborn
