Music Quotes - Page 119

Okay, you can stay at home and Spotify, or YouTube, or you can get off your ass and come listen to what real musicians making real music sound like. And, hey, it doesn't have to be me, but if I'm in town, then yeah, you should definitely check me out.

I have so many opinions about everything it just comes out during my music. It's a battle for me. I try not to be preachy. That's a real danger.

We shouldn't feel restricted by our sexuality, and our sexuality doesn't have to be a cultural choice. That's an amazing variety of music within those five main performers.

Some musicians are not great technicians, but they give you a rich point of view.

It appears to me that the subject of music, from Machaut to Boulez, has always been its construction. Melodies of 12-tone rows just don't happen. They must be constructed....To demonstrate any formal idea in music, whether structure or stricture, is a matter of construction, in which the methodology is the controlling metaphor of the composition...Only by 'unfixing' the elements traditionally used to construct a piece of music could the sounds exist in themselves--not as symbols, or memories which were memories of other music to begin with.

My music is about being strong, even in your vulnerability

I’d just play the music and dance. When I’m dancing, I don’t even notice how I’m doing it.

The music speaks for itself!

Trane was the perfect saxophonist for Monk's music because of the space that Monk always used. Trane could fill up all that space with all them chords and sounds he was playing then.

I never thought that the music called "jazz" was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic.

When you work with great musicians, they are always a part of you . . . their spirits are walking around in me, so they're still here and passing it on to others.

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

The history of music is mortal, but the idiocy of the guitar is eternal.

Through music I either tame my demons or unleash them and allow them to be what they are. I don't want the music to be about provocation, I want the music to bring you to a place where you feel at home

A lot of music is mathematics. It's balance.

I've always hid behind the music despite the fact that I have a huge personality. I'm thrilled that the music is bigger than me and will outlive and outlast me. It frees me up to take risks.

I've always liked to be the kind of drummer and musician who likes to go outside of what's expected of me.

Anything you are shows up in your music - jazz is whatever you are, playing yourself, being yourself, letting your thoughts come through.

After theology I give to music the highest place and the greatest honor.

A lot of musicians are really hard to deal with. They aren't as smart as me.

When I am not too sad to listen, music is my consolation.

What separates great jazz musicians from average ones is Taste. Those who have taste consistently choose notes, tempos, timbres and voicings that seduce and satisfy attentive listeners.

If you don't like Louis Armstrong, you don't know how to love.

Everyone will recognize that each sound carries with it a tangle of sensations, already well-known and exhausted, which predispose the listener to boredom, in spite of the efforts of all musical innovators.

Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough on his backside.