Trombone Quotes & Sayings

CIA Interrogator:
Have you ever met any jazz musicians you would describe, or who would describe themselves, as anarchists?
Bartholomew 'Barley' Scott Blair:
Hmmm ... ah, there was a trombone player, Wilfred Baker.
Bartholomew 'Barley' Scott Blair:
He's the only jazz musician I can think of who is completely devoid of anarchist tendencies. — John Le Carre

Trombone lessons?" I asked. "I couldn't resist," Eve said with a smile. THE NEXT CHAPTER What Eve was experiencing in her late seventies - and what I was — Ari L. Goldman

There's pride on Bourbon Street for the musicians that work there. They take it very seriously. I've never worked there or played in band there, but it's a part of the city. They play for the tourists and represent a whole different side of the culture of our city. — Trombone Shorty

The jazz trombone is a magical experience particularly to hear and listen too. — John Jensen

As for the orchestra,' Quinsonnas continued, 'it has fallen very low since his instrument no longer suffices to feed the instrumentalist! Talk about a trade that's not practical. Ah, if we could use the power wasted on the pedals of a piano for pumping water out of coal mines! If the air escaping from ophicleides could also be used to turn the Catacomb Company's windmills! If the trombone's alternating action could be applied to a mechanical sawmill - oh, then the executants would be rich and many! — Jules Verne

He brings the cigarette butt to his mouth and lights up. He breathes in, and coughs; a rattling helicopter with a broken blade crashing into a herd of trombone playing sheep falling off a cliff into a DIY shop with a discount on spanners. — Craig Stone

I didn't grow up during the time that Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis and all those people were playing. So it's not really my responsibility to keep it up, what they were doing. — Trombone Shorty

Never look at the trombones, you'll just encourage them. — Richard Strauss

Arthur laughs at his son's embarrassment, though he also knows that this is exactly the kind of thing he likes about her. What does anyone like? Freckles, the curve of hair where she tucks it behind an ear, the sound of her voice when she tells a joke, her great, gleaming trombone in its velvet case. O'Neil has had girlfriends before, but this, Arthur knows, is different; he is entering the web, the matrix of a thousand details that make another person real, not just an object to be wanted. — Justin Cronin

There's a lot of music at my fingertips that I can be influenced by. And just because I play a horn, I don't need to sound, or try to capture, what was happening before me. I can just respect it and learn from it. — Trombone Shorty

'A guitar would work.' But then again so would a flute. A horn. A banjo. A tambourine. A trombone. The drums. When you're mixing music and love, there really is no bad combination." -Elvis Ruby — Nan Marino

Virtue is something you have to get good at, like playing the trombone or tolerating bores at parties. Being a virtuous human being takes practice; and those who are brilliant at being human (what Christians call the saints) are the virtuosi of the moral sphere - the Pavarottis and Maradonas of virtue. — Terry Eagleton

The wild notes of tuba and trumpet and trombone rattled and hummed through the trees. In the first group of musicians, there were kids as young as fourteen playing the tuba and one kid who probably couldn't drive banging a bass drum. They stomped together in rhythm to the music. Two ladies had dressed up in what looked like princess outfits. They wore white gloves and socks with tassels. — Hunter Murphy

You blow in this end of the trombone and sound comes out the other end and disrupts the cosmos. — Roswell Rudd

Making a movie is the same as an orchestra; it's moving all the different instruments and the sounds, the kinetic and the auditory and the visual all together. I'm probably the trombone. — Sylvester Stallone

I used to play drums when I was a kid, play the trombone. — Dolph Lundgren

I was given a horn at an early age. I never really got a chance to think about doing anything else until I was about 18, when I realized I could do something else if I wanted to. In my teens, I was rolling in it. — Trombone Shorty

I attended public school in Houston. I took piano lessons for several years, and in high school, I played trombone in the marching band. I remember especially enjoying two seasonal activities: ice skating with the Houston Figure Skating Club in the winter and visiting an aunt and uncle's farm in West Texas in the summer. — Robert Woodrow Wilson

A frisky spirit makes my trombone sing. — Chris Barber

When I started out, all I did was play my trombone. — Ray Conniff

The trombone is too sacred for frequent use. — Felix Mendelssohn

My greatest teacher was not a vocal coach, not the work of other singers, but the way Tommy Dorsey breathed and phrased on the trombone. — Frank Sinatra

I chose the trombone because the trombone players in the marching band got to be up front with the majorettes (because of the slides) and I loved that! — Quincy Jones

Todays the day gonna grab my trombone and blow Thunder on the Mountain — Bob Dylan

ached, until his head throbbed, all of that preparation comes down to today. It's finally here! He quickly brushes his teeth and puts on his Halloween costume. He picks up the trombone case and his school backpack and heads downstairs quietly, not wanting to wake his mother. He rips open the cellophane and drops two Pop-Tarts into the toaster and pours himself a glass of milk. He drinks the milk but doesn't touch the pastries. — James Patterson

Play the gayest tunes in your books, play them loud and keep on playing them, and never mind if a bullet goes through a trombone, or even a trombonist, now and then. — Philip Sheridan

If there's one quality I hate in a woman, it's modesty. Besides making me, with my trombone mouth, feel vaguely uncouth, I think it's a chickenshit response to the demands of the marketplace, or the universe, not that I can tell them apart. — Emily Carter

The red-jacketed band stirred to life. The first musician raised his trumpet. The trombone dipped. The drumstick rose. Lea lowered her clarinet. It had been Brent's idea not to have their insturments rise and fall in unison. The staggered motion gave it a more exciting rhythm. — Paul Fleischman

The trombone is the true head of the family of wind instruments ... it has all the serious and powerful tones of sublime musical poetry, from religious, calm and imposing accents to savage, orgiastic outburst. — Hector Berlioz

When I was a kid, my friends and I formed a band, Trombone Shorty's Brass Band. When I was six, I was a bandleader for my brother's band. — Trombone Shorty

One of the crazies moved into the cone of light beneath a streetlight. It was a black man, high-stepping and making jerking movements with his arms. He made a crisp turn and began moving back into the darkness. He was a trombone player in a matching band in a world somewhere else. — Michael Connelly

I more or less think that the trombone was chosen for me. I first selected a violin, which I didn't do too well with, and, ironically, the only thing left was the trombone. My next choice was a saxophone, but they didn't have any; so I think that the Creator had a lot to do with what I did ... Because things just happened, you know, and I had no control over it. And I ended up with my instrument that I play now. — Curtis Fuller

In my opinion, the trombone is the true head of the family of wind instruments, which I have named the 'epic' one. It possesses nobility and grandeur to the highest degree; it has all the serious and powerful tones of sublime musical poetry, from religious, calm and imposing accents to savage, orgiastic outburst. Directed by the will of the master, the trombones can chant like a choir of priests, threaten, utter gloomy sighs, a mournful lament, or a bright hymn of glory; they can break forth into awe-inspiring cries and awaken the dead or doom the living with their fearful voices. — Hector Berlioz

I never felt like that in my life. I didn't know human beings played these instruments. I heard them in Chicago and Louisville and St. Louis all my life, you know? But I didn't know human beings played them, you know? So the next day I went to Coontz Junior High School and I started on sousaphone, tuba, B-flat baritone, E-flat alto, French horn, trombone. — Quincy Jones

Trombone virtuoso and innovative composer, Papo combines the best of jazz and Latin music to create a genre that is unique and wild. He's redefined Latin jazz! — Michael Brecker

Grade 9: I was too small for football, too shy for drama class, but I did have a passion for music. And so, with a mouth full of braces (and a glorious mullet), I accepted that the trombone would be a fantastic scholastic counterpart to my extracurricular loves: country music, and the guitar. — Jason McCoy

I hate to say it, but Christmas as a kid was always a moneymaking venture for me. I played trumpet, and a friend of mine who played trombone and a guy who played tuba, every Christmas we'd go out for three or four days beforehand and play Christmas carols on our horns. — John Tesh

After I learned the piano, I went on to learn percussion, the tuba, b-flat baritone, French horn, trombone, trumpet, most of the instruments in the orchestra. Trumpet was my instrument. — Quincy Jones

I have been told I've got a darkish personality. A few times."
Takahashi swings his trombone case from his right shoulder to his left. Then he says, "It's not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There's shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort. I don't think you have a particularly dark character. — Haruki Murakami

Music is changing. I'm just doing what I'm doing, and hopefully in the next 20, 30 years, some kids can take what I'm doing and change it again. If the music doesn't move, then it's dead. — Trombone Shorty

Every time I talk about this, I say: when the singer is singing, he must be respected, you must be able to hear what he's saying. You can't put a trombone and a drum up there, and a microphone on the drum, microphones on everybody. You can't hear what he's saying. — Compay Segundo

New Orleans is like a big musical gumbo. The sound I have is from being in the city my whole life. — Trombone Shorty

The thing that influenced me most was the way Tommy played his trombone. It was my idea to make my voice work in the same way as a trombone or violin-not sounding like them, but "playing" the voice like those instrumentalists. — Frank Sinatra

The Prince stood beside the timpanist to count his rests for him and see that he came in in the right place. I suppressed all the trumpet passages which were clearly beyond the players' grasp. The solitary trombone was left to his own devices; but as he wisely confined himself to the notes with which he was thoroughly familiar, such as A flat, D and F, and was careful to avoid all others, his success in the role was almost entirely a silent one. — Hector Berlioz

Poetry translation is like playing a piano sonata on a trombone. — Nataly Kelly

I played trombone for 10 minutes, and then I was in an accordion band in school for even less. — Colm Meaney

I've dreamed a lot of things and a lot of them have come true. The Grammy nomination was the last thing on my list before I had to write a new one. So I'm working on a new one. — Trombone Shorty

The trombone and side-drums in the chamber music of Stravinsky will do well enough in a very smart house-party where all the conversation is carried on in an esoteric family slang and the guests are expected to enjoy booby-traps. Very different is the outlook of some of our younger masters such as Hindemith, Jarnach, and others, whose renunciation of beauty was in itself a youthfully romantic gesture, and was accompanied by endless pains in securing adequate performance. The work of masterly performers can indeed alone save the new ideas from being swamped in a universal dullness which no external smartness can long distinguish from that commemorated in the Dunciad. — Donald Francis Tovey

You can be in Tokyo or Alberta at four in the morning in your hotel and you can still practice if you feel like it. A trombone cannot do that at four in the morning. — Toots Thielemans

The whirligig featured a drummer, a trumpet player, a clarinetist, and a man with a trombone. It was a leap beyond the spouting whale, with more figures, a six-bladed propeller, and a much more complex system of rods and pivots that made the instruments dip and rise as if the musicians were marching. — Paul Fleischman

Musicians in my day had nicknames. My name was "Satchel Mouth," like a doctor's satchel. When I went to England this fellow was strictly English, and he was editor of the newspaper there. He shook my hand after I got off the train and said, "Hello, Satchmo." So right away my trombone player said, "Mmm, the man thinks you have mo' mouth than Satchel Mouth." So I was stuck with it, and it turned out all right. — Louis Armstrong

My first instrument was actually the trombone, but that didn't last long. Soon I was playing guitar in bands from the time I was 11 or 12. — Dave Grohl

The trombone is not meant for romance ... any instrument that hawks up it's own loogie every ten minutes is not meant for wooin' the ladies. — David Crowe

I remember when I first rocked in it was a great big dance hall and Tommy Young was blowing trombone and Louis [Armstrong] was singing a tune and it was just Satchmo and you could hear it resounding through the dance hall and people were dancing. It was a highlight. — Gordon Lightfoot

The only thing that ultimately matters is to eat an ice-cream cone, play a slide trombone, plant a small tree, good God, now you're free. — Ray Manzarek

I came to that wooden marching band. I stopped and looked. There was a trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and drum. Birds don't live alone, I told myself. They live in flocks. Like people. People are always in a group. Like that little wooden band. — Paul Fleischman