Gerry Mulligan

In a way, I started out to be a baritone player.

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.

What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

You can make a saxophone into an electric organ; you can do everything with it.

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

I’ve always had a deep love of live performance, it’s when I feel most alive.

I regard singing pretty much like acting. Each song is like playing a different role. I get very involved with my material. I feel a responsibility for the emotion it brings out in the listener.

I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man.

I expect the audience to come up to my level.

I get interested in the various ways that music is being done in the culture, and some of it I like thoroughly enough to want to learn about it. The way I have been successful at doing that is to become part of it.

Blow your life through your horn.

All music is beautiful.

If the audience doesn’t hear what is going on, is it going on?

My style is to just play. The more “live” you capture your music-the more unthought-out-the more magical it is.

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

I kind of hate the fact that people are always trying to put you into a category. I hate walls, and I hate boundaries. I don’t like that. I listen to everything.

There’s so many ways you can hit one note.

An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.

It’s very difficult for me to dislike an artist. No matter what he’s creating, the fact that he’s experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we’re in a brotherhood of some kind… we’re in it together.

The fans dictate to you when you’re done!