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It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.
Sep 24, 2025
For me, music and life are all about style.
Don't play what's there, play what's not there.
Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.
...to me if it's anything, jazz is a verb-it's more like a process than it is a thing.
If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am.
The idea is more important than the style you're playing in.
Each man has his own music bubbling up inside him.
Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now.
There is no truer truth obtainable by Man than comes of music
The idea is more important than the object.
Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.
Hipness is not a state of mind, It's a fact of life!
I compulsively reach for perfection in music, often at the expense of everything else in my life.
My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often - in fact, mostly - at the expense of everything else in my life.
Jazz washes away the dust of every day life.
Life is a lot like jazz. It's best when you improvise.
Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music.
All a musician can do is to get closer to the source.
Music is indeed the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.
Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.
Master your instrument. Master the music. And then forget all that bullshit and just play.
Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread--without it, it's flat.
If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn.
Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom.
If you can walk, you can run.
Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life.
Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.
A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
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.
Music gives a soul to the universe.
You are the music while the music lasts.
Man, there's no boundary line to art!
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
If music be the food of love, play on.
Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.
Music expresses that which cannot be put into words.
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life.
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