Anthony Wilson

It’s easier to copy someone else than to find out how to avoid sounding like someone else.

It takes an intelligent ear to listen to Jazz.

What I’m doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word – I love it.

You don’t rehearse Jazz to death to get the camera angles.

If you must listen to bad music, please use headphones.

You may be sitting in a room reading this book. Imagine one note struck upon the piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room – proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle.

I wasn’t interested in practicing Bach; I was too busy digging Horace Silver!

I’m famous… ain’t that a bitch?

Let me whisper it. Let me sigh it. Let me sing it, my dear or I will cry it.

Music has to be accessible.

The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago.

Wes Montgomery played impossible things on the guitar because it was never pointed out to him that they were impossible.

In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds.

I thought Eric Clapton was good. He still is. Not only is he good – he’s rock’s #1 guitarist, and he plays blues better than most of us.

Jazz music is our original American culture.