Terence Blanchard

Forget about upholding the tradition and just play who you really are.

I don’t like to hear someone put down Dixieland. Those people who say there’s no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don’t know.

I hear beauty and elegance combined with passion and fire.

Jazz and love are the hardest things to describe from rationale.

True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.

Jazz demands that you bring to it things that are valuable to you, that are personal to you.

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.

I didn’t get my music together until I was 40.

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

I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out.

Everyone is working who should be.

To play without passion is inexcusable.

Music is the great arbiter of the world, the key to central harmony and a necessary requirement of human emotion.

There has always been a tension between Jazz as a commercial music and as an art form.

It’s not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.

I’d like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I’ve heard.