Kenny Werner Quotes

Nothing in music is hard, just unfamiliar.

It is good to view things as familiar or unfamiliar, rather than as difficult or easy.

Just before I play, I like to feel that no-one has ever played the piano before, that I'm in complete virgin territory, and that every note I play is the most beautiful sound I've ever heard.

Music can shoot through the musician like lightening through the sky if that music is unobstructed by thoughts.

Ultimately, musicians of the world must come to realize the potential of their calling... If the musician is illuminated from within, he becomes a lamp that lights other lamps.

Intellect has to surrender to instinct when it is time to play.

Mastery is playing whatever you're capable of playing-every time-WITHOUT THINKING.

There is no easy or difficult; only familiar and unfamiliar.

In many cases, the decision to study music has robbed them of the ability to play music. They have lost respect for music that comes from within because they have been programmed to feel "unworthy".

In fear, we expect; with love, we accept.

If one's life depends on doing something right, as in the case of the tightrope walker, one will practice on a much deeper level.

We are all part of a universal game. Returning to our essence while living in the world is the object of the game. The earth is the game board, and we are the pieces on the board. We move around and around until we remember who we really are, and then we can be taken off the board. At that point, we are no longer the game-piece, but the player; we've won the game.

Bill Evans described his tunes as vehicles; they are vehicles for self-expression, or expression of the self.

Fear closes all doors to the true self, that brilliant center where the ecstasy lies.

I never call myself modern or traditional, in our out, new or used, because I prefer not to be hemmed in by rigid definitions.