Quotes & Sayings About Jazz Band

I've played drums since I was 15. My sisters and I all played instruments. I kind of started with piano and then I actually played saxophone with a jazz band in middle school. So, any knowledge I had of jazz music was from playing alto-sax back then. — Miles Teller

Shared leadership ... is less like a an orchestra, where the conductor is always in charge, and more like a jazz band, where leadership is passed around ... depending on what the music demands at the moment and who feels most moved by the spirit to express the music. — Phillip C. Schlechty

In the States, this type of jam-band phenomena has opened it up for groups to improvise, admittedly more in the groove area, as opposed to the straight-ahead jazz thing - which is good for me, as that's one part of where I'm at. It's been so great playing these gigs and seeing kids come out and the whole college scene. — John Scofield

The guitar is such an incredible instrument; it plays classical, flamenco, jazz, country, bluegrass, rock, acid, blues. You'll never see a clarinet playing Black Sabbath. But you will see a guitar in a clarinet band playing rhythm. It is the most popular instrument in the world; it is the one everybody loves. — Randy Bachman

There are those, too, who are ethnically predisposed in favor of funerals, who recognize among the black drapes and dirges an emotionally potent and spiritually stimulating intersection of the living and the dead. In death and its rituals, they see the leveled playing field so elusive in life. Whether we bury our dead in Wilbert Vaults, leave them in trees to be eaten by birds, burn them or beam them into space; whether choir or cantor, piper or jazz band, casket or coffin or winding sheet, ours is the species that keeps track of our dead and knows that we are always outnumbered by them. — Thomas Lynch

It's true I've always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way. — Gerry Mulligan

During the so-called Jazz Age, most of the music's key exponents focused their creative energy on soloing not bandleading, on improvisation not orchestration, on an interplay between individual instruments not between sections.
[...] Commercial pressures, rather than artistic prerogatives, stand out as the spur that forced many early jazz players (including Armstrong, Beiderbecke, and Hines) to embrace the big band idiom. But even in the new setting, they remained improvisers, first and foremost, not orchestrators or composers. — Ted Gioia

I used to hang out a lot in jazz clubs, and the groups took to a kid like me who wasn't afraid to get up and sing with a jazz band. Then I started to hang out in rock clubs and learned to carry off different styles. — Eric Burdon

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

I was in a rock band; I was my own folk singer; I was in a death metal band for a very short time; I was in a cover band, a jazz band, a blues band. I was in a gospel choir. — Kiesza

I had a jazz trio, a rock n' roll band, and I played drums in junior high, high school, college, big bands, and I played timpani in the symphony. I am a drummer. It's the one instrument I actually play pretty well. It's just hard to carry on your back. — J. D. Souther

You always come back to Duke Ellington - he's kind of like the thread that holds everything together from the big band descending to lots of jazz, actually. — Herbert

As a quartet, they struck an unmusical note, primarily the fault of Ybarra-Jaega, who seemed as out of place in their company as a violin in a jazz band. — Truman Capote

I think that band [Glenn Miller] was the beginning of the end. It was a mechanized version of what they called jazz music. I still can't stand to listen to it. — Artie Shaw

When I was a teenager, I dreamed of being an opera singer like Maria Callas or a jazz singer like June Christy or Chris Connor, or approaching songs with the kind of mystical lethargy of Billie Holiday, or championing the downtrodden like Lotte Lenya. But I never dreamed of singing in a rock-and-roll band. — Patti Smith

My dad was all about music. He was a musician, leading a band when I was born. His band was active all through the 40s. He'd started it in the late 20s and 30s. According to the scrapbook, his band was doing quite well around the Boston area. During the Depression they were on radio. It was a jazz-oriented band. He was a trumpet player, and he wrote and arranged for the band. He taught me how to play the piano and read music, and taught me what he knew of standard tunes and so forth. It was a fantastic way to come up in music. — Chick Corea

My brother had a big band in high school; after that we continued to play together, eventually forming a group called the Jazz Brothers, that recorded for Riverside Records. — Chuck Mangione

Hamp would ask me about tempos in the band: 'Jacquet,' he'd say, 'knock off that tempo.' A lot of jazz musicians didn't prefer to play for dancers, which was their loss, really. But good jazz has always had that dance feel. — Illinois Jacquet

To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group
a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project. — Cornel West

They went along a balcony that looked down over the dining room and the dance floor. The lisp of hot jazz came up to them from the lithe, swaying bodies of a high-yaller band. With the lisp of jazz came the smell of food and cigarette smoke and perspiration. The balcony was high and the scene down below had a patterned look, like an overhead camera shot. (Nevada Gas) — Raymond Chandler

When I was growing up, in L.A., I went to these schools, Fairfax High School, Bancroft Junior High School, and they had great music departments. I always played in the orchestra, the jazz band, the marching band. — Flea

I shined off high school band, marching, jazz studies. At the time I was too cool for school, I had this professional gig and I was going home taking a shower and heading to downtown Hawaii, Waikiki. — Eric Hernandez

There are so many parts of music that it's actually a pleasure for me to work with an orchestra, or a jazz band, or a choir, and use every element that the musical tool box can offer. The world of music I love so much, and I can change the costume depending on the part, and I'm actually in the film. — Alexandre Desplat

Big band music, to me, it really has three key elements. First is the lyrics are really sweet, and they're just really family-friendly. The second thing is the music is jazz music, so the music is complicated enough to hold your attention for 5 or 6 million plays. That makes the songs interesting. The last part is the fact that it's danceable. — John Tesh

Robert Altman made that movie Kansas City about the jazz scene in the city, and we saw that band all together, and that was an amazing show. That's what I got into. I like jazz. — Nick Kroll

I was 16 when I came to New York. I had graduated to a tenor banjo in the school jazz band, and it was kind of boring - just chords, chords, chords. Then my father took me to a mountain music and dance festival in Asheville, North Carolina, and there I saw relatively uneducated people playing great music by ear. — Pete Seeger

inquiries. You will feel it in the music and cherish it as the most magical part of the jazz idiom. If you don't, you can always leave the jazz club and check out a rock or pop covers band. That's perfect entertainment for people who want to live in the realm of perfect replication. Jazz, in — Ted Gioia

It's just music. It's trying to play clean and looking for the pretty notes. The beat in a bop band is with the music, against it, behind it. It pushes it. It helps it. Help is the big thing. It has no continuity of beat, no steady chug-chug. Jazz has, and that's why bop is more flexible. — Charlie Parker

At Carnegie Hall the Preservation Hall Jazz Band showed how easily it could hop from era to era. It could work like a rhythm-and-blues horn section or a tightly arranged little big band if need be, but it could also switch back into the polyphonic glories of vintage New Orleans jazz, in which nearly every instrument seems to improvise around the tune at the same time. — Jon Pareles

When I'd hear something that sounded like I could follow it - most of those big band jazz tunes are blues anyway - I would hum it and play with the fiddle while I was humming. — Johnny Gimble

I remember once I asked Wayne for the time," Miller told Mercer. "He started talking to me about the cosmos and how time is relative." Miller and [Wayne] Shorter were waiting somewhere -- an airport, a train station, a hotel. The band's keyboardist, Joe Zawinul, who took charge of such matters as what the road crew was supposed to do and when, set Miller straight. "You don't ask Wayne shit like that," he snapped. "It's 7:06 p.m." [p.1] — Ben Ratliff

I haven't got a great jazz band and I don't want one. Some of the critics, Down Beat's among them, point their fingers at us and charge us with forsaking real jazz ... It's all in what you define as 'real jazz.' It happens that to our ears harmony comes first. A dozen colored bands have a better beat than mine. Our band stresses harmony. — Glenn Miller

The E Street band casts a pretty wide net. Our influences go all the way back to the early primitive garage music, and also, we've had everything in the band from jazz players to Kansas City trumpet players to Nils Lofgren, one of the great rock guitarists in the world. — Bruce Springsteen

My school music teacher, Al Bennest, introduced me to jazz by playing Louis Armstrong's record of "West End Blues" for me. I found more jazz on the radio, and began looking for records. My paper route money, and later, money I earned working after school in a print shop and a butcher shop went toward buying jazz records. I taught myself the alto saxophone and the drums in order to play in my high school dance band. — Bill Crow

I grew up playing the saxophone. I joined the jazz band in high school, but somewhere along the way I realized the guys who strummed acoustic guitars at parties were the ones who got the attention. So I asked a friend to show me a few chords, and when I moved to L.A. I spent a lot of time practicing my guitar. — Chris Carmack

I think we as a band, as individuals, understand that all popular music stems from blues and jazz and even pop, but rock 'n' roll especially comes from blues. — David Johansen

My brother Leon started it all. He played the piano. In school they made me leader of the orchestra because I played the violin, but I followed Leon and the boys in his jazz band around. — Louis Prima

I have a theory that musicians recognize each other and if they are destined to collaborate together they will. Mainly, they recognize each other according to the class they belong to. If they are punk-rocker kids from the neighborhood, they are going form a band. If they happen to be musicians that are going to play in pubs and restaurants, they are going to recognize each other, form a band and play together. If it's about musicians that are playing jazz and are going to jazz festivals, for e.g., then they are going to meet and work together. — Vlatko Stefanovski

I spent five years, at least, working with Miles. Together, we recorded ESP, Nefertiti, Sorcerer
and I can tell you; each of these albums instantly became jazz classics. Hey, we had Wayne Shorter playing tenor sax, Ron [Carter] on bass, Tony Williams played drums. That was great band we had. — Herbie Hancock

I lay my body down in another city, another hotel room. Once Louis Armstrong and his band stayed here. Later the hotel fell to trash. New money resurrected it. Under the red moon of justice, I dream with the king of jazz. — Joy Harjo

There are a few things that I will hopefully be credited for as a pioneer. One is my four-mallet playing. Another one is the starting what was first called jazz rock in 1967 when I started my first band, later became jazz fusion by the 1970s. — Gary Burton

I love most melodic music - classical, reggae, big band, jazz, blues, country, pop, swing, folk. — John Lescroart

Benny Goodman's band was integrated before baseball. Even before it was physically integrated, music was integrated. Everyone listened to Armstrong and Ellington. The 20s was called the Jazz Age. It's part of being American. — Wynton Marsalis

We're not like a nostalgia act, or the normal classic rock act - we're a really good musical organization, ... You're going to hear some blues, some jazz, a little of everything. The guys in the band are great musicians. When we play, we're there for real. It's not about posing, strutting in tights, that kind of stuff. It's all about music, and I've always respected my audience that way. — Steve Miller

I suppose subconsciously I was thinking in terms of having the scale of it matching the scale of the images. Hence the sort of string quartet, jazz band and electronic stuff. — Jonny Greenwood

Now, the instrumentation in the jazz band and the jazz dance band has gone through many evolutions. For instance, in the 'twenties the tradition was two or three saxophones. — Gerry Mulligan

In the Bay Area, there was a resurgence of Dixieland jazz in the '40s - there was the Frisco Jazz Band, and Lu Watters and the Yerba Buena Jazz Band. — Clint Eastwood

Yet I've noticed the same thing when your band plays - the most amazing social coherence, as if you all shared the same brain."
"Sure," agreed 'Dope', "but you can't call that organization."
"What do you call it?"
"Jass. — Thomas Pynchon

Communication is the essential medium of a creative culture: the communal sea in which we all swim. A company that can't communicate is like a jazz band without instruments: Music just isn't going to happen. — John Kao

Around middle school I studied jazz guitar and ended up playing in a jazz band for a bit. But, after high school, I haven't even touched a guitar. — Mike Tucker

It's hard to explain what happens when jazz and punk fuse with a violin twist but it works. Probably because Anson Choi takes off his shirt while he's playing the saxophone. Whoever's not chatting up a Cadet or a girl from Darling House or playing chess with the guys is watching the band. I turn into a
groupie. — Melina Marchetta

I haven't a great jazz band, and I don't want one. — Glenn Miller

When I joined the band I didn't know any of the tunes, and when I left the band I didn't know any of the tunes! — Keith Jarrett

I grew up in a home filled with music and had an early appreciation of jazz since my dad was a jazz musician. Beginning at around age three I started singing with his band and jazz music has continued to be one of my three passions along with acting and writing. I like to say jazz music is my musical equivalent of comfort food. It's always where I go back to when I want to feel grounded, — Molly Ringwald

I grew up listening to Switchfoot. I love Switchfoot; they're a great band. John Foreman is awesome. I really dig mainstream pop music, but I also have a heart for jazz and rock. Oh! Coldplay! I cannot miss Coldplay! I think 'Fix You' is one of the most brilliantly written songs ever. It's, like, my favorite song of all time. — Shane Harper

'Swing' is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a 'swing band' in music. — Artie Shaw

The way that we imitate each others' riffs is something that other bands don't do as much. If we're jamming with a jazz band, or I am jamming with a jazz band, I have to catch myself, the tendency is always to do that. — Mike Gordon

My early influences were the Shadows, who were an English instrumental band. They basically got me into playing and later on I got into blues and jazz players. I liked Clapton when he was with John Mayall. I really liked that period. — Tony Iommi

I played Big Band jazz music. I wasn't into rock and roll. I was just there because it was a living. I surprised everyone. I'm still surprising people. — Bobby Vinton

One interesting thing about jazz, or art in general, but jazz especially is such an individual art form in the sense that improvisation is such a big part of it, so it feels like it should be less soldiers in an army and more like free spirits melding. And yet, big band jazz has a real military side to it. — Damien Chazelle

I've been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet. — Al Jarreau

I always told the people at Cal Arts that if they wanted me to do Jazz studies, first of all, there couldn't be a big band within 500 miles and that I could do what I wanted to do. And they said I could. — Charlie Haden

We get along, we talk music.Lenny Kravitz took me to Harlem to see this little jazz show in the back of a church. It was just shitty fluorescent lights and a small stage piano, but this band tore it up. — Penn Dayton Badgley

Don't clap I'm not a jazz band for Christ's sake. — Dylan Moran

In high school, I was always into Jerry Lee Lewis, and they decided they needed a piano player for the jazz band. I had my little boogie-woogie thing that I did, so I did my little boogie-woogie thing. I had a very high-pitched voice. — Nellie McKay

The jazz band's chief stimulus, of course, was the rise of the negro 'blues' and their exploitation by the negro song-writer, W. C. Handy. — Bix Beiderbecke

When I was a kid, I used to listen to my Emerson radio late at night under the covers. I started by listening to jazz in the late 1940s and then vocal harmony groups like the Four Freshmen, the Modernaires and the Hi-Lo's. I loved Stan Kenton's big band - with those dark chords and musicians who could swing cool with individual sounds. — Frankie Valli

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

When I was playing piano, it was like, 'I'm going to write a song using all the white keys.' My music director, who knew my jazz background, suggested I try big-band music, so we spent a year experimenting with it in concert, and the audience reaction was really good. — John Tesh

It's all about respect; he's looking for respect from his buddies. In the last one he just wanted to hang out, to be part of the group, but this time he wants more from his friends. And without giving the story away, he finally gets something that he has been looking for when the mini sloths kidnap him and take him to their tribal area. He gets to be the Fire King and they worship him and there is an amazing scene with a "call and response" sequence in the style of Cab Callow [the legendary American jazz singer and band leader] between him and his audience — John Leguizamo

I have very eclectic taste in music. I like everything from Nirvana, which is featured in the film, to world music, to orchestral and jazz. For me, the nineties were about Oasis, because I was travelling around Britain when that band exploded onto the music scene. — Isla Fisher

It has been difficult to hold onto many paintings but I have retained a few. Possibly the current favorite is titled 'Big Band' completed in 2005. It measures 13 feet x 9 feet. It has 18 nearly life size recognizable portraits of the biggest jazz stars that I knew and saw perform in the 1950s, '60s, '70s, '80s and includes Wynton Marsalis. — LeRoy Neiman

In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it's a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don't listen. — Chet Baker

There were so many specific things from high school jazz band that I remembered: the conductor searching out people who were out of tune, or stopping and starting me for hours in front of the band as they watched. — Damien Chazelle

Duke Ellington's career traces the entire history of jazz. The repertoire associated with him contains the most important elements in the music and provides concrete examples of some of the best ways to present the music in the widest variety of settings-radio, TV, recordings, movies, concert halls, festivals, solo, small ensemble, big band, symphony orchestra, opera, Broadway shows ... You name it, he did it! — Billy Taylor

And I played in jazz band as well during all three years in school. — Travis Barker

I think The Doors are one of the classic groups, and I think we're all tempted to feel like the time in which we grew up was somehow special, but I really do believe that there were two golden eras in music: The Forties and Fifties of big band, jazz and swing, and the Sixties and Seventies of rock. To me, they're really unparalleled. — Edgar Winter

My dad was a jazz fan and he used to have lots of old 78s, so I grew up with big jazz bands and the likes of Duke Ellington and Count Basie - although I really liked show tunes from those big musicals as well. I've always kept my ears open, as it were, when it comes to music. It doesn't matter to me what type of music it is. If I like it, I'll listen to it. — Ric Sanders

Most of the stuff I learned to play, I learned in high school. I had a band in high school, a jazz-fusion thing, and I was the keyboard player. I was interested in how the instruments worked and the theory behind playing with them. — Brian McKnight

My dad was a huge big band and jazz fan, and we both sort of enjoyed be-bop, but man, it required so much skill to play it. And then there was cool jazz, the era that Miles, Coltrane, and Ornette ushered in, and that found a home in me. It turns out that that music was just really where I breathed. — J. D. Souther

My favorite band of all time is The Clash. The thing I love about The Clash is they started out as guys who could barely play three chords. They dabbled in reggae, punk, rap, jazz. They came to a sound that could only be defined as The Clash. It was impossible to say what it was. I admire them for that. — Michael Franti

The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite. — Theodor Adorno

I think the key that differentiates the good actors from the mediocre ones that are still trying to come up, is that the good ones know how to listen. It's like being in a jazz band. They know how to listen to what the other musicians are playing. And where to come in and where to sit out. That's my approach to being in an ensemble cast and working with any kind of actors in a scene. — Wesley Snipes

My songs were influenced not so much by poetry on the page but by poetry being recited by the poets who recited poems with jazz bands. — Bob Dylan

I met Gary (Burton) at the Wichita Jazz Festival when I was 18
he was one of my favorite musicians and I got to play a few tunes with him there. Shortly after that, I joined his band, which was the equivalent of joining the Beatles for me! He was, and still is, one of the greatest musicians I have ever been lucky enough to be around. — Pat Metheny

What I see for the band by the end of this year is the Complex live at the Montreux Jazz Festival. I want my guys to be comfortable. I'm certainly not in this for the money, but I'd really like to see my guys make some money off of this stuff. — Jimmy Chamberlin

And this is the Marilyn section," says Budge. "You can have five different hairstyles, and in the outfits you get a choice too, depending on what movie. That's from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the pink dress; there's the black suit from Niagara, and over there is the all-girl jazz band one from Some Like It Hot ... " "Where are these headed for?" says Stan. "The Oprahs. Are they that into Oprah, in Holland?" "You name it, someone's gonna be fetishistic about it," says Derek. "Our biggest customers are the casino operations, — Margaret Atwood

In the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra we play such a diversity of music, with 10 arrangers in the band, we don't really worry about whether it's contemporary or not. — Wynton Marsalis

Bill Monroe spoke of bringing 'ancient tones' into his music with echoes of British and Irish fiddle and bagpipe music, while also delving deeply into American blues, gospel, folk hymnody, and hill country dance music. To that gumbo, he added the invigorating rhythms and harmonies of hot jazz. It was a new kind of American music, named in honor of his band The Blue Grass Boys to be known, simply, as bluegrass. — Paul Zollo

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences. — Wyclef Jean

It was liberating to do comedy. It felt like playing in a jazz band. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I'm not a jazz musician, because, I mean, firstly, I can't play anything. I'm not bad on the tamborine. I have a certain way with the triangle. But I'm not a jazz musician ... my band, they always joke, they always say that I'm a disposable, pop, jazz superstar. — Michael Buble

Well, I was in a band. I was the singer with a band called the Soul Satisfiers. I sang then quite a bit of Jazz and some Top 40 stuff. — Gloria Gaynor

I got my first set of drums when I was around 3. I went from band to marching band to Latin jazz band - it's like riding a bike. — Jeremih