Great Musician Quotes

When kids look up to great scientists the way they do to great musicians and actors, civilization will jump to the next level

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

You can't make a great musician or a great photographer if the magic isn't there.

Great musicians accept everything that they hear and find something good. They take what they like and they throw away what they don't like

I think that what trips up a lot of great musicians is that they become involved with too many things that aren't where their strengths lie.

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician

Jay Ashby is simply a great musician!

Growing around great musicians, you just can't help it. I identified with it immediately. It was something that was so natural to me that when I started singing, it was almost like speaking.

People need to put my music in a perspective where they use other established artists from the past, and almost all the names I see related to my music are great musicians.

When I hear a great musician, I can feel his life inside the music.

I feel very honored to be playing with Bill Pierce. He's such a great musician.

I didn't want to be precious about things. Of course, the idea is to make great music, but if you have great musicians up there, it gives me some leeway to play around a little bit.

The world has lost a great musician who will always be an inspiration to me and those at OBEY GIANT.

If you strive to become a good human being with the qualities of generosity, humility and having reverence for life...just maybe you'll become a great musician.

Jonny Lang has the power to move the music into the next millennium by reaching the ears of a new generation. The great musicians have the power to break all of the 'isms'-race, age, sex, et cetera. Jonny Lang is one of those musicians.

Frank [Zappa] always wanted to do a sound library - he sampled so many great musicians. For piano, for example, he sampled every octave, not just one (that you could just transpose electronically), and he did all different types of attack, with and without pedals, all that kind of stuff.

All my momma's people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.

You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.

When I auditioned for my high school band the band director was excited because my father was known to be a great musician. When he heard me, he said 'Are you sure you're Ellis's son?'

For about seven years. I really like it there. There are a lot of great musicians. The scene is very open. A lot of stuff going on. People's ears are really open, they are not closed. A lot of scenes here, people just get tunnel vision and are into one thing.

The guys that I played with, Hollis Dixon and the Keynotes - just about all the great musicians from Muscle Shoals.We played fraternity parties and kids' dances. They were called "lead outs" for kids in high school. We played wherever we could - in the down time when you weren't recording, people had to make money.

I know a lot of great musicians that don't know they're even great, because mangers try and make them feel belittled like they're not worth a crap.

Nobody gives a crap if we're great musicians.

I'm such a copycat."I want to try and do this like the Donovan song 'Changes'," or "I want to do this bit from Van Morrison." I don't know how else to illustrate something, because I'm not a super-great musician. In that way, I'm more like the producer.

I've been collaborating with Ira Schickman on some songs, and there will be many other, great musicians involved.

We're not like a nostalgia act, or the normal classic rock act - we're a really good musical organization, ... You're going to hear some blues, some jazz, a little of everything. The guys in the band are great musicians. When we play, we're there for real. It's not about posing, strutting in tights, that kind of stuff. It's all about music, and I've always respected my audience that way.

Pablo Casals is a great musician in all he does: a cellist without equal, and extraordinary conductor and composer with something to say. I have been profoundly impressed by all I have heard of his work, but he is a musician of this stature because he is also a great man.

A great musician is just a thief who doesn't get caught

When I worked with General Electric, again this was soon after the Second World War, you know, I was keeping up with new developments and they showed me a milling machine and this thing worked by punch cards - that's where computers were at that time, and everybody was sort of sheepish about how well this thing worked because in those days machinists were treated as though they were great musicians because they were virtuosos on these machines.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

I did a concert... in September with the Berlin Philharmonic... They're great musicians, and there's always something to learn from them.

Be good to people. Be good to every single person you come into contact with. My best friends are great musicians. But more than that, they're great people.

The problem is that the internet IS some kid in a basement with an opinion. The fact that David Bowie and Elton John told me that they were fans of Helmet - or Neil Young - that means something to me because I grew up on their music and they’re great musicians... That means more to me than some guy who hates the fact that my hair is short.

Once again, in the fine tradition of North Texas Lab Bands, this is truly a superb band. Under the artful leadership of Neil Slater, these great musicians have managed to combine small group "openness" with the swinging precision of a classic big band. Very enjoyable!

I'm in awe of people like Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard; they're great musicians and people. But I'm most starstruck by people in the small town where I live. Especially single dads, like me, who are working five times as hard to raise their kids.

Bourbon Street is like playing, a tourist, you know? It's just a tourist attraction ... those musicians on Bourbon Street, they play all day. They might start at 12 noon and end at 3 in the morning, like, it's like sets, like a job. You go play, take a break, play again, take a break, then later on that night, the club gets busier, then you play some more. There's pride. They're a group of great musicians- and they're holding it down.

I had a really nice association with Richie DeRosa, a great musician, a great drummer and composer and arranger. And I had a number of classes with him.

Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

They tell me Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

Man, there's no boundary line to art!

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

So Nemerov showed us this picture, which is of Apollo flaying Marcius. You don't think of Apollo as being the sort of person who would skin someone alive. But the story behind it was that there was this guy who was a really great musician, and all the women loved him, and people started saying he was the best musician in the world, so Apollo got jealous and he challenged this guy to a musical dual. They would each play a song and the muses would judge who was the better musician.

I'm always going to get more of a charge playing Chicago than I will Duluth or some place like that. Just because of the history and the people there are way more knowledgeable than a lot of other cities. It's an amazing music scene with some great bands and great musicians.

Jonathan Kreisberg is a great musician whose playing and writing always tell a story. His formidable technique and intellect never get in the way, but only serve the agenda of the heart.

I was always moved by all of the music. As a young man, Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton, Count Basie and all these great musicians would come through our town of Memphis. There wasn't adequate hotels, so these musicians - the lady who ran the theater knew my mother, who had a large house, and many of them would stay with us. So that was another great blessing, so I'm always around these great geniuses, and to realize their humanity is such a touching thing.

They say that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a homosexual. Truth be told, we don't love him because of that, but he was a great musician, and we all love his music. So what? I assure you that I work with these people. I sometimes award them with state prizes or decorations for their achievements in various fields. We have absolutely normal relations, and I don't see anything out of the ordinary here.

Where words fail, music speaks.