Bill Evans

To imitate someone is to insult them.

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

If you take the time and your talent is real, it will last.

Music comes from the moment, it is spontaneous, it exists at the time it is created.

Music should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise. It’s easy to rediscover part of yourself, but through art you can be shown part of yourself you never knew existed. That’s the real mission of art. The artist has to find something within himself that’s universal and which he can put into terms that are communicable to other people. The magic of it is that art can communicate to a person without his realizing it.

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’m fascinated with the electronic devices that we can mess around with.

Records used to be documents, but now record companies want product.

Composing is a mindset, a part of who I am.

They always want to sell me as a hard bopper.

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.

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

Jazz music is the real deal.

I don’t believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.

Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

Music comes from the moment, it is spontaneous, it exists at the time it is created.

Genius is a word too often tossed around in musical circles.

Music is the tool to express life – and all that makes a difference.

To keep a band together you simply need a gimmick. The gimmick I use is to pay them money.

A great symphony is a man-made Mississippi down which we irresistibly flow from the instant of our leave-taking to a long forseen destination.

End phrases where you feel they should end. Don’t look for resolutions you don’t feel because the books call for them.