Sonny Rollins

Jazz never ends… it just continues.

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one’s own.

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress…so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

Talk of God is most often in church. Is there a God outside of church? I hope so. But how should I know? How does anybody know?

My creed for art in general is that it should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise . . . a part of yourself you never knew existed.

Well, for me it’s – music is the instrument of life.

I’ve noticed that the more adventurous and in that mode that I am, it seems that the more the audience really likes it.

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

[In 1972] At the moment, we’re getting the same thrill from seeing the Eagles, Jackson Browne, Jo Jo Gunne, and Judee Sill happen… It’s as hard to do it with Jackson Browne as it was to do it with Joni five years ago.

Music to me is like breathing. I don’t get tired of breathing, I don’t get tired of music.

Your humanity is your instrument.

Our music is generally the music I would play way back when I was in the record business. So I’ll play World Waiting For The Sunrise and How High The Moon, maybe Over The Rainbow, some standards. But it depends upon the artist that comes up – if people like a certain kind of music, I will focus the show that way. Whoever walks up on to the stage is the star – he is the picture, we are the frame. The frame is there to make the star look better – let’s make this fellow the best he’s ever going to be.

I would say that a composer writes music to express and communicate and put down in permanent form certain thoughts, emotions and states of being. The resultant work of art should speak to the men and women of the artist’s own time with a directness and immediacy of communicative power that no previous art expression can give.

It’s always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don’t know where it comes from, it’s just there and I don’t question it.

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.

Jazz amounts to Blues, your unique sound and the elusive genius of improvisation.

I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer.

The high note is not the only thing.