Bill Evans

I’m using the insides of sounds to move around in a very subtle way which, I think, ends up being inevitable. I feel its the only solution to that particular problem that I presented myself.

Despite the fact I’m a professional performer, it’s true that I have always preferred playing without an audience.

First of all, I never strive for identity. That’s something that just has happened automatically as a result, I think, of just putting things together, tearing things apart and putting it together my own way, and somehow I guess the individual comes through eventually.

I’m… a rather simple person with a limited talent and perhaps a limited perspective.

It’s performing without any really set basis for the lines and the content as such emotionally or, specifically, musically. And if you sit down and contemplate what you’re going to do, and take five hours to write five minutes of music, then it’s composed music. Therefore I would put it in the classical or serious, whatever you want to call it, written-music category. So there’s composed music and there’s jazz. And to me anybody that makes music using the process that we are using in Jazz, is playing Jazz.

I say this because it’s a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to. You hear musicians playing with great fluidity and complete conception early on, and you don’t have that ability. I didn’t. I had to know what I was doing. And ultimately it turned out that these people weren’t able to carry their thing very far. I found myself being more attracted to artists who have developed through the years and become better and deeper musicians.I believe in things that are developed through hard work.

I could write six songs in one day with everything that’s going on.

Jazz never ends… it just continues.

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

All music is beautiful.

One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people were doing.

Music should never be harmless.

I haven’t a great Jazz band and I don’t want one.

Always look ahead, but never look back.

You never get it figured out. You just keep playing.

Jazz is not a what, it is a how.

The hidden things, the subconscious that lies in the body and lets you know: You feel this, you play this.

All this is saying is, OK I see now, the ‘hood does not quite want Shirley Bassey yet, so let me still give them this. Crack Music was made after Diamonds. After black people were like, ‘I don’t know about this one.’ It was like me reaching too high for the cookie jar.

Hipness is not a state of mind, it’s a fact of life.

Music is a gift and a burden I’ve had since I can remember who I was.

I have a nice car, a Mercedes. And then I have an old El Camino truck that I’m crazy about. I like to get in that truck and go up in the hills near where I live, in Vegas, and take my camera. That, to me, is Heaven, being out in nature, taking pictures of the wildlife.