Best Jazz Musician Quotes & Sayings

I would not describe myself as an avid jazz fan and I am not a jazz musician myself. However, that is not to say that jazz does not play a vital and important role in my life. — Nat Wolff

Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear. — Ralph Ellison

I was in this public high school in Princeton, and it had this topnotch jazz program - if you were a musician of any kind of caliber, your holy grail was to be in that orchestra. It was that claim to fame of the school, of the town, other than the university. But it was better than the university band. — Damien Chazelle

If you truly have expertise - and expertise can be say a chess master who has really mastered something or an artist or a musician of some sort you know if you give a jazz musician ... — Sheena Iyengar

I fear that I won't get better and that I won't have time to practice. To be called a "jazz musician" - it's a big responsibility. — Esperanza Spalding

Once the jazz musician learns all the fundamentals they can keep track of a lot of choices in an instant. — Sheena Iyengar

I started singing Folksongs with my mother when I was 6 years old. We sang at Folk festivals and concerts and schools. There was always music being played either on record, Jazz and Folk, by musician friends of my mother. I took to singing very early, I believe it has been a Gift I was born with. — Vicki Sue Robinson

I knew I could never be accepted as a straight-ahead jazz musician, nor would Iaccept myself as that. I would never be accepted as a minimalist. I wouldn't be adowntown composer. Because I find all orthodoxies, all doctrines to be ultimatelybanal. — Anthony Davis

In classical music, love is based on bitin'
imitation. It's not based on interpretation. A jazz musician, if he plays someone else's song, has a responsibility to make a distinct and original statement. — Todd Boyd

I don't think I've ever been true to jazz. There's always a kind of jazz element to what I do. There are a very few genres that I haven't tried out, really, in what I've been doing. As a jazz musician, you can kind of mess about with things with a certain level of musicianship, which helps. — Jamie Cullum

Many of the jazz musicians whom are no longer here. You don't realize that it's history when it is happening and then time passes and you look at a picture and you say "Wow, there is history attached to that." — Carol Friedman

The age of 18 seemed the right time to try something different in my life. Moving to the U.K. was a risk, and I was never confident that I could ever make a full-time living being a musician, but I had to try. Initially, I worked as a jazz musician in pubs or with bands. — Manfred Mann

I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It's not like I'm cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do. — Carlos Santana

My secret dream has always been to be a jazz musician. I tried the saxophone for a year or two when I was younger, but unfortunately I had to face the fact that I was not really talented! — Gaspard Ulliel

As any jazz musician knows, it takes flexibility and adaptability for improvisation to create beauty. — Doc Childre

To date, [Wynton] Marsalis has received a total of nine Grammy Awards; a Pulitzer Prize (the first ever awarded to a jazz musician) ... and twenty-nine honorary degrees, including Columbia, Brown, Princeton and Yale; the National Medal of Arts; and numerous awards from other countries. — Randy Sandke

You've got to do what you know before you know what you're doing."

Duke Madison, Jazz Musician — Andy Martello

Astronomers, like burglars and jazz musicians, operate best at night. — Miles Kington

The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous. — Dave Brubeck

Well, being a jazz musician is not a rose garden! — Toots Thielemans

Armstrong was the key creator of the mature working language of jazz. Three decades after his death and more than three-quarters of a century since his influence first began to spread, not a single musician who has mastered that language fails to make daily use, knowingly or unknowingly, of something that was invented by Louis Armstrong. — Dan Morgenstern

I started to listen to Japanese jazz musicians when I went to high school. Some people I listened to were Yosuke Yamashita, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Sadao Watanabe. — Hiromi

So for all that we might speak words in each other's vicinity, this could never develop into anything that could be called a conversation. It was as though we were speaking in different languages. If the Dalai Lama were on his deathbed and the jazz musician Eric Dolphy were to try to explain to him the importance of choosing one's engine oil in accordance with changes in the sound of the bass clarinet, that exchange might have been more worthwhile and effective than my conversations with Noboru Wataya. — Haruki Murakami

I used to sing with my father's jazz band and then when I was ten years old a musician friend of his suggested that I try out for the first west coast production of Annie. — Molly Ringwald

I play classical music almost exclusively. I never mastered jazz or gospel in the way that my mother did. She was a fine improvisational musician. I pretty much have to stick to what's written on the page. — Condoleezza Rice

I actually wanted to be a jazz musician first. My grandparents introduced me to Louis Armstrong. I loved Louis Armstrong so I took up the trumpet and just did that every day and practiced that. — Douglas Booth

It might seem a contradiction but... the ability to improvise requires lots of practice. Ask any jazz musician. — Ted Agon

One of the most obvious aspects of the music to people who know jazz is: How does it feel in the swing? These are things that are very subtle and that jazz musician appreciate in a particular way. I appreciate the way Tommy Flanagan swings, the way that Barry Harris swings, the great pulse that Hank Jones and Bill Evans have - end every one of them is different. — Chuck Israels

Jazz musicians are the coolest people on the planet. Can I have some cool? — Jon Stewart

At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music. — Herbie Hancock

I became a professional musician and played all kinds of music. I played bluegrass, I played classical music, and for many years, I played jazz. — Terry Teachout

He [Benny Carter] is all that every jazz musician the world over wants to be. He's performed 20,000 nights. How many shoes have been shined? How much mascara put on? Rouge? How many of those impossible bowties have been tied? How many love songs have been sung? How many dances have been danced? How many have passed to the sound of his music? It's been said that a man should not be forced to live up to his art. Benny Carter is one of the rare instances when we wonder whether the great art that a man has created can live up to him. — Wynton Marsalis