Gerry Mulligan

If you’ve only got one horn playing, I still want the sense of ensemble.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

I like what I hear other guys doing, but the thing that really attracts me is melodic playing.

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

It’s true I’ve always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

I’m fascinated with the electronic devices that we can mess around with.

Jazz is so incestuous that it’s starting to kill itself.

I use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.

You can separate the men from the boys and ballads.

Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.

I don’t do something because I think it’ll sell 30 million albums. I couldn’t care less if it sells just one.

Jazz stresses less on technical exhibitionism and much more on emotional content.

A great song can pull me out of a slump and lighten my heart.

Audiences are smart. They are not going to come out to see you unless you are honest.

If one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach.

I met up with George Shearing about a year before my mother passed away. When I was 11 years old, Mama took me to the Edgewater Inn in Seattle and I was able to sit down and play piano for George and a lot of (the set list) was songs I had heard from the album, ‘Concerto For My Love.’ Then, after Mama died, my dad and I went to actually hear him perform at the Edgewater Inn when I was 12. Oh my gosh! It just really got me into playing piano.

I was a singing disc jockey who heard every type of music there was – and loved it all.

Sometimes I sound like gravel and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.

I never wanted to be like other blues singers. I might like hearing them play, but I’ve never wanted to be anyone other than myself. There are a few people that I’ve wished I could play like, but when I tried, it didn’t work.

Miles’ sessions were not typical of anybody else’s sessions. They were totally unique.

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.