Jazz Quotes - Page 29

I like to listen to classical music... I like mainline jazz.

If you go back to the roots of jazz, it was all about COLLECTIVE improvisation.

For me, jazz will always be the soundtrack of the civil rights movement.

We always talk about how everyone is unifocal. You can't possibly be interested in jazz and Beethoven. Of course you can. You can't both be reading a newspaper and be online. Of course you can. We shouldn't be obsessed with a gun to your head, 'You either read a newspaper or die!'

There are three virtuous styles of music; classical, jazz and heavy metal. I do love classical music but I don't listen to it much anymore and I never listen to metal, so I am not very interested in music that is difficult to play.

I like a lot of electronica. I like older jazz rather than newer.

Jazz musicians like John Coltrane needed these very clear titles for their abstract music, and your decision to bring voices into your music as a way to tap into content. It's related to the way my text-based work still functions as abstraction for me. If I repeat a sentence down a canvas, the text starts to smudge and disappear. It essentially becomes an abstract piece. The meaning of the text is still there.

I've had the pleasure of playing with the baddest Jazz cats on the planet.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

Nobody knows where jazz is going, because nobody has ever known where jazz was going. I mean, you couldn't possibly predict the Swing Era from the '20's or bebop from the Swing Era or Avant-garde from Bebop, or Effusion, or on and on and on. So, we don't really know where it's going.

I think all of us begin as writers. I wanted to be a writer from the time I as eight, long before I heard of jazz. The question is, once you have that obsession, what is your subject going to be and you often don't know for some time. It might become fiction, it might be non-fiction, and if it's non-fiction it can go in any number of directions.

Charlie Parker was the greatest individual musician that ever lived. Every instrument in the band tried to copy Charlie Parker, and in the history of jazz there had never been one man who influenced all the instruments.

They always want to sell me as a hard bopper.

And will I like being called a jazz-baby? You will love it.

I like all kinds of music, though I tend to prefer jazz and classics.

Today, because I want to be gentle on my back, I listen to jazz.

Louis Armstrong was the primary contributor to jazz music in the 20th century. His improvisational skills served as the principal model for all who came after him, regardless of one's chosen instrument.

The main thing about the word jazz, is that it's very limiting to what people are doing.

My dad would play me all of these records: Miles Davis records, John Coltrane records, Bill Evans records, a lot of jazz records. My first exposure to music was listening to jazz records.

"Jazz" to begin with, is a really bad word... all the true musicians that really play jazz, jazz is the worst word for it. Jazz is a process. Jazz is a creative process. It's not so much a genre, but a way of expression.

Brubeck, for instance, is not careless. He's a studied guy. And even if his picture ends up on the back cover of Life, he's still a studious guy.

I love music, and a lot of it. Jazz is probably on the top with guys like Miles Davis. But I even enjoy music from the '60s and '70s.

In jazz, there is a lot of European influence harmonically.

Jazz to me is a living music.

And I used to listen to a lot of jazz.