Arturo Sandoval

To rise above the crowd, discipline yourself unceasingly to the strict demand and realities of your ambition.

I am only a mixture of countless influences and thanks to that I am able to find my own style of playing.

The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception. All you can do is play melody. No matter how complicated it gets, it’s still a melody.

I often wonder whether Negroes like myself who are pretty well known help out at all in breaking down barriers.

I thank you in advance for the great round of applause I’m about to get.

Music washes away the dust of every day life.

We’re more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don’t know which will go first; rock and roll or Christianity.

..I wanted to create music that was so different that my mother could tell me from anyone else.

I remember going to sleep many nights with a Gibson catalog, dreaming about getting a Les Paul. I finally did, with a loan from my Dad. It’s a really heavy instrument. But it plays like butter. I met Les backstage at a show once. Jeff Beck made me play ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ for Les, which was a little embarrassing. He changed history, big-time.

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.

External instruments are only extensions of the biological instrument.

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.

New artists can own their content and completely build their base and their following without having to sell or be owned by anybody and it creates such a diversity.

I’m gonna live till I die.

Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.

Life is 10% what you make it and 90% how you take it.

If you think it, want it, dream it… then it’s real. You are what you feel.