Oscar Peterson

You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz.

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.

I don’t believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.

We’re not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.

I have no one style.

I play as I feel.

I’ll be writing songs till I die. There’s just no question.

Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

I prefer no one to teach me. I prefer to swing on my own.

What I learned the most from Prince was putting art first, being creatively ambitious, and putting creativity at the forefront of what I do.

Talent is only the starting point.

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

For a long time I wasn’t listening to music, to the rock and roll stuff on the radio, because it would cause me to get sweaty–it would bring back memories I didn’t want to know about, or I would get that feeling that I’m not alive ’cause I’m not making it. And if it was good, I hated it ’cause I wasn’t doing it. And if it was bad, I was furious ’cause I could’ve done it better…

I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was 6 years old.

Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.

The other day I came across a recording I made of a night at my apartment when I was living with Kris Kristofferson. Bob Dylan had been around earlier and we were all passing around the guitar. Whenever it came to my turn I would run into the kitchen and say I’d left the coffee on the stove or something. Shyness. Scared to perform.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

I listen to everything, I listen to all artists that come along.

Music doesn’t have to hop to be hip, as long as it swings it sings.

You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.

From hard rhythms of Be-bop, the mellow harmonies of Cool, to atonal forays of Free and the Straight Ahead delivery of Modern, it’s all Jazz.