Music Quotes - Page 113

Without music, life would be a blank to me.

I've outdone anyone you can name - Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.

music alone can abolish differences of language or culture between two people and evoke something indestructible within them.

Music to me is something that I didn't choose; it was a necessity. I grew up with music, my father is a musician. It makes me happy; it makes people happy.

All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.

Film music really is about point of view and you can shift it wherever you want really depending on how you look at it.

They didn't dictate to me as to what kind of music that they wanted me to play or what tunes, what musicians that I was going to use. They let me do my thing. That's one reason I stayed there for twenty-eight years.

Jazz is not background music.

Music sets up ladders, it makes us invisible, it sets us apart, it lets us escape; but from the visible there is no escape.

Music should be healing. Music should uplift the soul. Music should inspire.

One day, music will take its rightful place as the true religion of Mankind.

The real art of conducting consists in transitions.

I got to where I couldn't listen to country radio. Country music is supposed to have steel and fiddle. When I hear country music, it should be country.

We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn't just ours -- it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you can't beat it.

Just follow that one road the whole time!... I hope they don't get lost, I'm so bad at giving directions.

The future of our nation depends on providing our children with a complete education that includes music.

I think there are only three things that America will be known for 2,000 years from now when they study this civilization: the Constitution, jazz music and baseball. They're the three most beautifully designed things this culture has ever produced.

Perhaps two million years ago the creatures of a planet in some remote galaxy faced a musical crisis similar to that which we earthly composers face today.

Regarding jam sessions: Jazz musicians are the only workers I can think of who are willing to put in a full shift for pay and then go somewhere else and continue to work for free.

Fight the tendency to become complacent and do one kind of music - that is the death of a musician.

I don't know any musician who got to the top without hard work. Take whoever you want. They all work bloody hard, harder than you think.

Since it [architecture] is music in space, as it were a frozen music.

The universe without music would be madness.

Kind words are the music of the world.

In 1968 I ran into Steve Lacy on the street in Rome. I took out my pocket tape recorder and asked him to describe in fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation. He answered: "In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds." His answer lasted exactly fifteen seconds.