Terri Lyne Carrington

Our music artistry should not be disconnected from our lives or ourselves.

Jazz means many things to many people, but it’s all about choices.

Women have not been socialized to play drums. It’s not natural for us to hit thing.

Women bring something different to an instrument if they are respectful of their feminine aesthetic.

When I heard T-Bone, I flat out lost my mind.

A Jazz man should be saying what he feels: humor, sadness, joy… all the things that humans have.

A beat is a moment in the life a groove.

If you’re making money people don’t think you’re playing Jazz. When you’re not making money they think you’re a great Jazz musician.

Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.

Music is born out of the inner sounds within a soul.

I gave it my absolute everything I had in that howl at the start of the song. And then B. B. King opened up his mouth and I felt like a girl. We had learned and absorbed, but the more we tried to be like B.B., the less convincing we were.

You don’t know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything.

Jazz music will continue to thrive, possibly in unexpected ways.

I’m always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I’ve been.

My dream is to do whatever I want without any interference from the record company.

It’s a matter of who would be right for each song. Mickey Hart for ‘All We Need is An Island’ – he’s the only guy I know who has Tahitian drums and every kind of drum on the planet.

A Jazz performance centers upon the process of creation. The final objective is not only the finished product, but the path and process taken towards it.

Music isn’t just learning notes and playing them. You learn notes to play the music of your soul.

Always look ahead, but never look back.