Playing Jazz Quotes

I hate Stanley Clark, but I have to admit he's playing Jazz whether I like it or not.

When you're working on a television show with actors, what you hope you're doing is playing jazz with them all the time. You see what they're giving you, so you try to write back to that, and then they play with that, and you get a sense of what is going on. That's just a natural way in which TV series usually work.

Jazz is what I play for a living.

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.

Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there's a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music.

The reward for playing jazz is playing jazz.

Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.

Never play anything the same way twice.

Jazz music is America's past and its potential, summed up and sanctified and accessible to anybody who learns to listen to, feel, and understand it. The music can connect us to our earlier selves and to our better selves-to-come. It can remind us of where we fit on the time line of human achievement, an ultimate value of art.

It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am.

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.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

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

Who knows ... we'll be playing Jazz and having a good time!

Just because I'm playing jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me, the way I feel, through jazz, or whatever.

Switch to piano! No. Really, if you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice. Of course, it would be best if you could actually sing with your own voice. The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. Therefore, the challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument or 'voice' that is outside of your body. I love that challenge and have for over forty-five years. As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.

I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.

Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.

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.

If you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!

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.

The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception.  All you can do is play melody.  No matter how complicated it gets, it's still a melody.

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.

To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.

Of course we've lost so many superstars who've made jazz what it is. We've lost so many musicians who created new things and changed the way we think about music and who took jazz to a new level. So jazz is suffering from that. But we still have a lot of incredible people playing jazz in the world. We have a lot of people leading the way.

Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they're trying to say with jazz. You don't need any prologues, you just play. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

I got into playing the jazz. I played jazz for a good while. I did the popular stuff first. You got the "Twelfth Street Rag" and those kinds of things. Then I got to hanging around with a bunch of guys starting to playing jazz. We'd go from one place to the other and take our instruments, just perform for free.

Master your instrument. Master the music. And then forget all that bullshit and just play.

Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

Growing up playing jazz and improvising has had a big impact on me, and it translates into my music.

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.

When I die, I want them to play The Black and Crazy Blues, I want to be cremated, put in a bag of pot and I want beautiful people to smoke me and hope they got something out of it.

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.

I have a theory that musicians recognize each other and if they are destined to collaborate together they will. Mainly, they recognize each other according to the class they belong to. If they are punk-rocker kids from the neighborhood, they are going form a band. If they happen to be musicians that are going to play in pubs and restaurants, they are going to recognize each other, form a band and play together. If it's about musicians that are playing jazz and are going to jazz festivals, for e.g., then they are going to meet and work together.

I was in college, but I got kicked out. It was a very free school, but I created a "bad impression." Like I was a bit more fiery in those days. At the time I got kicked out, I knew exactly what I was going to do and didn't even bother to go back for a leaving certificate. Then I was singing in folk clubs around Birmingham and playing jazz in clubs on Sundays.

Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate upon it in order to get the most of it. You must absorb most of it. The harmonies within the music can relax, soothe, relax, and uplift the mind when you concentrate upon and absorb it. Jazz music stimulates the minds and uplifts the souls of those who play it was well as of those who listen to immerse themselves in it. As the mind is stimulated and the soul uplifted, this is eventually reflected in the body.

You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played

I started playing jazz by slowing down Tal Farlow records and analyzing his runs

Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.

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.

It doesn't matter if people are playing jazz or writing poetry. If they want to be successful, they need to learn how to persist and persevere and keep on working until the work is done... I bet there isn't a single highly successful person who has not depended on grit. Nobody is talented enough to not have to work hard, and that's what grit allows you to do.