Playing Jazz Quotes & Sayings

When you're playing jazz, you have to somehow overcome that feeling of being intimidated because your aim is to portray that freedom in what you're playing. — Buddy DeFranco

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

Jazz is what I play for a living. — Louis Armstrong

The vocal chorus will be along shortly: I like that part especially and the abrupt manner in which it throws itself forward, like a cliff against the sea. For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, only notes, a myriad of tiny jolts. They know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them and destroys them without even giving them time to recuperate and exist for themselves. They race, they press forward, they strike me a sharp blow in passing and are obliterated. I would like to hold them back, but I know if I succeeded in stopping one it would remain between my fingers only as a raffish languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even will it. I know few impressions stronger or more harsh. — Jean-Paul Sartre

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

He defined the state as being so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost. — Steven Kotler

Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one. — Miles Davis

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

Dave's playing and repertoire evokes memories of the golden era of Modern Jazz, and in addition to being a nice guy he happens to be a bebopper of the finest order. — Chris Cortez

Personally, I think young musicians need to learn to play more than one style. Jazz can only enhance the classical side, and classical can only enhance the jazz. I started out playing classical, because you have to have that as a foundation. — Doc Severinsen

His musical inspiration operates in a world uncluttered by conventional bar lines, conventional chord changes, and conventional ways of blowing or fingering a saxophone. Such practical 'limitations' did not even have to be overcome in his music; they somehow never existed for him. Despite this-or more accurately, because of this-his playing has a deep inner logic. Not an obvious surface logic, it is based on subtleties of reaction, subtleties of timing and color that are, I think, quite new to jazz-at least they have never appeared in so pure and direct a form. — Gunther Schuller

As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction. — Stan Getz

I love all types of music. Jazz, classical, blues, rock, hip-hop. I often write scripts to instrumentals like a hip-hop artist. Music inspires me to write. It's either music playing or completely silent. Sometimes distant sound fuels you. In New York there's always a buzzing beneath you. — Chadwick Boseman

...teaching is like playing jazz. Even if you perform the same number over and over, it never comes out the same twice, and you don't know exactly how it will sound until you hear it. Teaching is like writing with your voice — Earl R. Babbie

I would urge a young player to listen to Charlie Christians' sense of time ... I'll never forget listening to my father (Bucky Pizzarelli) and Tal Farlow playing Christians' 'Solo Flight' backstage at a gig ... that's when it hit me how big of an effect Christian had on jazz guitar. 'Solo Flight' was like the gospel ... — John Pizzarelli

Jazz is musical humor. The noun jazz describes a modern American technique for the playing of any music, accompanied by noise called harmony, and interpolated instrumental effects. It also describes music exhibiting influence of that technique which has as its traditional object to secure the effects of surprise, or in the broadest sense, humor. — Bix Beiderbecke

If it hadn't worked out professionally, I would be teaching music theory and composition in a small college somewhere and playing drums in a jazz trio at the Holiday Inn on weekends, and I'd be happy there, too. — J. D. Souther

There's something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It's really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it's all for one purpose, and there's no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it's all up to you. It's really jazzthat's the big secret. Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat. — Keith Richards

People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play. — Roy Ayers

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning. — B.B. King

Just because I'm playing Jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through Jazz. — Charles Mingus

As my career has progressed, I've had the pleasure of playing with the baddest jazz cats on the planet. But that doesn't change my desire to entertain folks. That's really who I am. — George Benson

I enjoy playing clubs. I still enjoy the closeness of the nightclub venue. However, after a certain period of time and after playing around some of the clubs in New YorkI felt that jazz should be presented in a more prestigious atmosphere. — Sonny Rollins

Around age 11 or 12, I started playing jazz bass. From there, I went to electric bass and then guitar, which I kept up for a long time. — Joshua Roman

And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it. — Wynton Marsalis

I was pretty much prepared because I was already playing in extremely good ways when I arrived from Europe because I played jazz four or five years before I arrived here. — Miroslav Vitous

And the thing about jazz, through all the business involved in practicing and improvement, it's always sweet: the improvement that you notice in the ability to express yourself, the feeling of playing, pushing yourself out into an open space through a sound, man. That's an unbelievable feeling, an uplifting feeling of joy to be able to express the range of what you feel and see, have felt and have seen. A lot of this has nothing to do with you. It comes from another time, another space. To be able to channel those things and then project them though an instrument, that's something that brings unbelievable joy. — Wynton Marsalis

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

As I've grown older I've been more influenced by more meandering styles of guitar playing, whether it's Celtic or Ethiopian folk music or some kind of noisier jazz like Sonny Sharrock. In terms of songwriting, I don't know that I could even pin it down. — Ted Leo

People like Art Blakey and Buddy Rich, you look at them playing music, and it's just like looking at a heavy metal drummer. I mean, they're playing with the same amount of ferocity. It's not to say all jazz is like that. — Damien Chazelle

To me, Bill's musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit. — Robert Fripp

If you're an impressionistic painter and you want to paint expressionism, you've got to change. You've got to figure out a way to do it and do it. If you've been playing jazz all your life and you want to start to play rock n' roll, blues, then do it. — Tobin Bell

The radio is playing jazz, and I listen to the sound of the trumpet playing a solo until I become that sound. — Joy Harjo

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

It's not easy to play in a framework that requires simplicity and to tastefully find ways to interject the kind of freedom that we have in playing jazz. — Herbie Hancock

I was in college, but I got kicked out. It was a very free school, but I created a "bad impression." Like I was a bit more fiery in those days. At the time I got kicked out, I knew exactly what I was going to do and didn't even bother to go back for a leaving certificate. Then I was singing in folk clubs around Birmingham and playing jazz in clubs on Sundays. — Steve Winwood

I got into playing the jazz. I played jazz for a good while. I did the popular stuff first. You got the "Twelfth Street Rag" and those kinds of things. Then I got to hanging around with a bunch of guys starting to playing jazz. We'd go from one place to the other and take our instruments, just perform for free. — Papa John Creach

I studied the lives of jazz singers who would tour Europe, and ... what I learned was life was big ride for them. They'd seen the dark side of humanity ... but touring the world playing jazz, it was a truly carefree way of living. A great escapism, if you like. — Gary Carr

I like jazz, but I could never play it. You just sit there with a guitar the size of a Chevy on your chest, wearing a stupid hat, playing the same solo for an hour. — Dave Mustaine

Now listen for your song. Everybody's got a song. When I used to chase the Trane - John Coltrane that is - he used to tell me, 'If I know a man's sound, I know the man.' Do you hear the melody playing in your mind? Does it move you, nudge you off your seat? — David Mutti Clark

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

Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another theme, incorporating it, somehow trying to work their way all together to a meaning of some kind, or at least a conclusion. — Alan Arkin

When you're working on a television show with actors, what you hope you're doing is playing jazz with them all the time. You see what they're giving you, so you try to write back to that, and then they play with that, and you get a sense of what is going on. That's just a natural way in which TV series usually work. — Remi Aubuchon

You have to enjoy playing. The old-timers did, and that's one reason why their music is a lasting music. I feel that I play jazz to entertain the listener, and you just can't do that unless you yourself are entertained at the same time. — Barry Harris

As long as there is democracy, there will be people wanting to play jazz because nothing else will ever so perfectly capture the democratic process in sound. Jazz means working things out musically with other people. You have to listen to other musicians and play with them even if you don't agree with what they're playing. It teaches you the very opposite of racism and anti-Semitism. It teaches you that the world is big enough to accommodate us all. — Wynton Marsalis

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

Jazz is not just 'Well, man, this is what I feel like playing.' It's a very structured thing that comes down from a tradition and requires a lot of thought and study. — Wynton Marsalis

I could hear music playing in the background of works by certain authors, like Poe and Shakespeare. And I discovered Nikki Giovanni when I was in eighth grade. Her writing has a musical energy with pulse and rhythm, almost like jazz or hip-hop. — Jill Scott

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 started playing violin because I was fascinated by how violin players could play so fast. I would buy their cassettes, and learn different concertos, but then I started rounding out my collection. My dad was a big jazz fan, so I just started hearing a lot more soul music. I loved Little Stevie Wonder, and I got really into him as a singer and a writer as I got older. — Toby Lightman

If I am playing any music at all it is jazz music. — Ginger Baker

Jazz should be recognized as music of the people, based in a lot of accents and melodies. What is jazz but music that people danced to? Jazz has the dynamic thing. I don't think you have to be playing only Charlie Parker licks on your horn or whatever the new version of that is. — Al Jarreau

I strive for honesty in playing what I feel. — Kenny Burrell

From the small clubs of the Harlem Renaissance where he began playing saxophone to world tours for the biggest of the big bands, Benny Carter redefined American jazz. From the start, his fellow musicians said the way he played the sax was amazing. They say that about me, too. (Laughter.) But I don't think they mean it in quite the same way. — William J. Clinton

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

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

If you're making money people don't think you're playing Jazz. When you're not making money they think you're a great Jazz musician. — Pete Fountain

The virtuoso element in jazz playing, all those very fast runs in the upper extremes, simply doesn't appeal to me. That's why I don't want to make my concerto "virtuosic" in the sense of a technical show-off. I want a beautiful sound and a melodic and lyrical line. I am more interested in the way someone can play musically. — Gavin Bryars

One thing about playing the real jazz is that you can't count it. — Mahalia Jackson

I didn't plan on rock-n-roll. I wanted to learn jazz; I got to know some people doing rock-n-roll with jazz, and I thought I could make some money playing music. — Robby Krieger

I can turn on some jazz guitarist, and he won't do a thing for me, if he's not playing electrically. But Jeff Beck's great to listen to. — Ritchie Blackmore

Lately, my mind is like an orchestra. If you don't have the conductor, you don't know what to do. One guy is playing jazz, one guy is playing rock and roll, another classical. It's a big mess. — Goran Ivanisevic

Jazz. Here in Germany it become something worse than a virus. We was all of us damn fleas, us Negroes and Jews and low-life hoodlums, set on playing that vulgar racket, seducing sweet blond kids into corruption and sex. It was a plague sent out by the dread black hordes, engineered by the Jews. Us Negroes, see, we was only half to blame - we just can't help it. Savages just got a natural feel for filthy rhythms, no self-control to speak of. But the Jews, brother, now they cooked up this jungle music on purpose. All part of their master plan to weaken Aryan youth, corrupt its janes, dilute its bloodlines. — Esi Edugyan

There are any number of players with extensive jazz backgrounds who haven't been able to fit into other styles," "It all boils down to taste, to playing what's appropriate for the context in which you're working. — Larry Carlton

What I love about Sonny's playing is that he is so inventive within the mainstream Jazz vernacular. Because he knows so many ways to deal with musical material, he is never repetitive and hasn't had to invent a new language. Also, he never asked me to do anything but swing! — Pete La Roca

You play me with your jazz & leave me with the blues. — Curtis Tyrone Jones

I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life. — Amy Tan

I teach in M.F.A. programs now, and I think that's a great way to become a novelist, but I mourn that Pete Dexter and Joan Didion's route is maybe less likely because there are fewer of those jobs. I always liken it to playing piano in some great dive jazz bar. You didn't pick the songs, you played what people asked for, but you got your chops. — Jess Walter

For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexibleorder gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves ... I would like to hole them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stooping one, there would only remain in may hand a corrupt and languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even want that death: I know of few more bitter or intense impressions. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. — Oscar Peterson

You have to go out and learn jazz by playing. — Paul Horn

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

I had 12 years of classical music as a child, playing piano competitions as a teenager, playing in blues bands and rock 'n' roll bands, country and jazz bands. I played in about any situation. — Ronnie Milsap

Who knows ... we'll be playing Jazz and having a good time! — Art Blakey

The Meters are, I think, the most influential group in our time to come out of New Orleans, to have changed and introduced us all to a way of playing, and to a groove and a level of feel in playing funk-jazz. — John Scofield

You never get it figured out. You just keep playing. — David Sanborn

Even though I'm a jazz-trained drummer, I cut my teeth playing rock. — Jimmy Chamberlin

You get this really cool groove when you're playing just piano, bass, and drums where everyone's sort of feeling each other's space, which is the only way to put it, but it really is true, and everyone's sort of sitting in their own pocket. It's kind of jazz-like. — John Darnielle

I started playing trumpet when I was 11 years old. All I wanted to be was a jazz trumpet player when I grew up. — Flea

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

I can only be me. I do what I do, I'm not a jazz player ... I don't play jazz standards, at least not in any recognizable way. It's not my turf but I have plenty of respect for that style of playing. — Jorma Kaukonen

In the early days of jazz, it was ensemble music: everybody playing all together. Nobody really stood out. — Terry Teachout

I hate Stanley Clark, but I have to admit he's playing Jazz whether I like it or not. — Lester Bangs

Of course we've lost so many superstars who've made jazz what it is. We've lost so many musicians who created new things and changed the way we think about music and who took jazz to a new level. So jazz is suffering from that. But we still have a lot of incredible people playing jazz in the world. We have a lot of people leading the way. — George Benson

Whenever you study composition you inevitably encounter Bach right off the bat. You can't get across the room without running into him and the other greats. Analyzing Bach absolutely influenced my jazz playing. — Howard Roberts

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

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

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

Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there's a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music. — Toots Thielemans

I'm not supposed to be playing, the music is supposed to be playing me. I'm just supposed to be standing there with the horn, moving my fingers. The music is supposed to be coming through me; that's when it's really happening. — Sonny Rollins

I've learnt new scales through playing different types of music, like Indian raga scales, gipsy scales and harmonically-based jazz scales. — Nigel Kennedy

I started off with classical music, and I got into jazz when I was about 14 years old. And I've been playing jazz ever since. — Herbie Hancock

I was always very leery of my piano playing. As a young kid, I wanted to be a jazz musician, but my taste was far greater than my ability. — Mike Stoller

The summer before my third year of law school, I worked at a law firm in Washington, D.C. I turned 25 that July, and on my birthday, my father happened to be playing in a local jazz club called Pigfoot and invited me to join him. I hadn't spent a birthday with him since I was 3, but I agreed. — Deval Patrick

I was a kid living in New Jersey, who - I'd wanted to make movies since I was a little kid, so that came before music for me. But I started playing drums just as a hobby, and I wasn't even really into jazz that much. — Damien Chazelle

Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Orchestras are not used to playing the kind of stuff jazz musicians like to play. It requires a lot of rehearsal and recording time, so it's much easier to do on a synth or sampler. So, we came up with that idea. — Eberhard Weber

Most of the musicians that I'm playing with now have jazz backgrounds, so they're comfortable with improvisation. And they all know to make eye contact with me, and I'll give them some kind of sign when I think that the song's ending. Or maybe I don't even have to, because they all sort of feel it at the same time. — Larkin Grimm