Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.
I want to be connecting with the subconscious, if I can call it that, because there are not to many words to describe the real deep inner part of a human beingI want to be at that place where everything is blotted out and where creativity happens, and to get there I practice, you know I'm a prolific practicer, I still practice every dayYou have to have the skills, then you want to not think when you're playing, that's when you let whatever deep level of creativity, spirituality, I mean, you know these words are so inadequate these days but you want to get to this place where they exist.
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.
Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.
No one is original. Everyone is derivative.
I think music should be judged on what it is. It should be very high and above everything else. It is a beautiful way of bringing people together, a little bit of an oasis in this messed-up world.
Improvisation is really not so much remembering things. And this is what I do when I play. I forget things. When I go on the stage, I want my mind to be a blank, so that I can - things can come into me without my knowing where they came from.
Jazz never ends... it just continues.
Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.
The thing is this: When I play, what I try to do is to reach my subconscious level. I don't want to overtly think about anything, because you can't think and play at the same time - believe me, I've tried it (laughs).
We have to make ourselves as perfect as we can.
I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.
I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress...so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.
How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed; that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.
I feel that I have an obligation to jazz and also to myself to play as good as I can play.
It's all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. These peaks will come again.
I'll know when I find the ultimate sound.
I miss playing with Miles. I did play with him a little while before he left the planet, but even at that time I longed to maybe do some things together.
...this is my dilemma. I'm a guy who makes things up as I go along, so nothing is ever finished - there are so many layers. So when you solo, yeah, you might get into one thing, but then, hey, everything has implications! You can hear the next level. And that's how I feel about improvising - there's always another level.
I'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not.
What I am more concerned about is whether our whole civilization will be around in the next 25 years.
One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.
I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.
But if I didn't have to make money, I would still play my horn.
I think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resources like a bunch of insane people. That's what I worry about more than I worry about jazz.
