Aaron Copland

I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.

It made no sense to ignore them and to continue writing as if they did not exist. I felt that it was worth the effort to see if I couldn’t say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms.

So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.

You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today.

The prospect of having to sit through one of Rachmaninov’s extended symphonies or piano concertos tends, quite frankly, to depress me. All those notes, and to what end?

The main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It’s useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.

I can’t listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.

The true artform is being a human being.

The blues was bleeding the same blood as me. The blues didn’t have to explain the mystery of pain that I felt; it was there in the songs and voices of singers like Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, in the cries of their guitars.

A guy is influenced by hundreds of people and things, and all show up in his work. To fasten on any one or two is ridiculous. I will say one thing, though. Lennie Tristano’s early records impressed me tremendously. Tunes like ‘Tautology,’ ‘Marshmallow,’ and ‘Fishin’ Around.’ I heard the fellows in his group building their lines with a design and general structure that was different from anything I’d ever heard in jazz.

You can’t seperate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues – you can’t seperate it. Because that’s where it all started, and that’s where it all come from – that’s where I learned to keep rhythm – in church.

That’s the beauty of music. They can’t take it from you.

Jazz is an art that makes a person completely naked.

I never really thought about becoming a professional musician.

Check out the albums, … Check out the live performances. That’s the reality of it all. Music is such an energizing thing.

I work very hard at being the best musician I can be because I love it.

Music is a reservoir… of sounds.

I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is ’cause I’m changing all the time.

If you’re gonna sing meaningful songs, you have to be committed to living a life that backs that up.

Some twenty years ago, during the course of a memorable evening at the Stravinskys’ home in Los Angeles, the venerable maestro turned to me and said in no uncertain terms: ‘My dear, you should conduct your own music. All composers should conduct their own music!

I still do what I love, and I don’t really think about it. I try to make a beautiful show, so people go home happy. That’s my biggest aspiration: to make people happy.