Quotes & Sayings About Saxophones

A strange thing has happened - while all the other arts were born naked, this, the youngest, has been born fully-clothed. It can say everything before it has anything to say. It is as if the savage tribe, instead of finding two bars of iron to play with, had found scattering the seashore fiddles, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, grand pianos by Erhard and Bechstein, and had begun with incredible energy, but without knowing a note of music, to hammer and thump upon them all at the same time. — Virginia Woolf

Louis Armstrong changed all the brass players around, but after Bird, all of the instruments had to change - drums, piano, bass, trombones, trumpets, saxophones, everything. — Cootie Williams

Alto (saxophone) is just a very hard instrument; there's so few people that play it really well. I feel it's the best one, too, now. At first I didn't feel that way; I wanted to be a tenor player. It took a long time for me to feel that alto was the most expressive of the saxophones. — Art Pepper

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen. — Carl Sandburg

Sometimes a sound gets overused. There is such a thing as a good saxophone, but it's like those fields in agriculture - they need to rest for a year or so. You need time to burn all the saxophones and start from scratch. — Thomas Mars

The Englishman foxtrots as he fox-hunts, with all his being, through thickets, through ditches, over hedges, through chiffons, through waiters, over saxophones, to the victorious finish; and who goes home depends on how many the ambulance will accommodate. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

The voluptuous chords of the wedding march done in blasphemous syncopation issued in a delirious blend from the trombones and saxophones--and — F Scott Fitzgerald

Actually, when I was very young, first starting to play, I think I probably listened more to clarinet players than to saxophones. — Gerry Mulligan

You can play Bach on the piano, a symphony orchestra or a quartet of saxophones, but let's stop this silly, childish business of knit your own musicology — Paul McCreesh

There existed very long saxophones from years ago. The player sat on their chair like a cellist; that same sort of feeling to it as well - unlike for example the way a harpist would be: the whole act differing in a very fundamental sense. Although harpists are fine. There is nothing to be said against harpists by any means whatsoever. — James Kelman

JULY 20. I've just walked into the opera house. I have no programme. Strange new players are premiering a piece by a flamboyant new composer. Front and centre, three, maybe four, whales begin - a swelling string section - discordant, irresolute harmonies fill the concert hall. Then two more whales, stage right, come in, playing eight octave clarinets, counterpointing the string section. And then they, too, are counterpointed by occasional glissando slurs and passages played pizzicato by whales at the rear of the stage. But suddenly, a programme change: The orchestra members switch clothes and pull new instruments from their cases. The French horn players begin wailing on shiny, sleazy saxophones. The trumpeters spit rapid-fire bursts into an underwater echo chamber - the deep, rocky corridor of Johnstone Strait. — Erich Hoyt

Is he about to become that man, that modern fool of a certain age, who finds himself pausing by shop windows to stare in at the saxophones or the motorbikes, or driven to find himself a mistress of his daughter's age? — Ian McEwan

I went to this little performing arts school in downtown Phoenix. You had to dance or act, and everyone sang in choir. I started out playing the saxophone, but I always wanted to be in an orchestra. That was a dream as a kid, and there aren't a lot of saxophones in an orchestra. — Kacy Hill

When I began listening to saxophones, I was first attracted to Coleman Hawkins. — Gerry Mulligan

I was regarded by my parents as having little musical talent other than a thin, nasal soprano voice. I was forbidden to touch my father's clarinets or saxophones, just my harmonica. — Pete Townshend

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

The other saxophones, except as solo instruments, really don't have much point in the orchestra. — Gerry Mulligan