Gabor Szabo

I’ve had the pleasure of playing with the baddest Jazz cats on the planet.

Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new.

People who like Jazz feel the depth and soul and intelligence that the music expresses.

I’d rather be B.B. King. That’s the way I started. Let the heavy metal guys play heavy metal, let the others play the other… I try to do what I do better, not get away from it.

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

It’s Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, you know. They got a musical mind together and uh, you can’t explain it.

He’s not a performer, he’s not a composer, he’s not even a musician, but Norman Granz is Mr. Jazz.

I have a nice car, a Mercedes. And then I have an old El Camino truck that I’m crazy about. I like to get in that truck and go up in the hills near where I live, in Vegas, and take my camera. That, to me, is Heaven, being out in nature, taking pictures of the wildlife.

Many people forget that Jazz, no matter what form it takes, must come from the heart as well as the mind.

Well if I could play like Wynton, I wouldn’t play like Wynton.

I am attracted to Jazz music for the idea of being in the moment and communicating to people spontaneously.

To play piano is a significant part of my life, my existence. It fulfills a very physical and spiritual need for me.

The jazziest American contribution to the vocabulary of English is Jazz itself.

When you’re creating your own shit, even the sky ain’t the limit.

I’m trying to make music a sensual expression, not and academic experiment.