D C DowDell

While many forms of music may use the dynamic of improvisation, Jazz exemplifies the unique characteristic of collective improvisation.

Jazz improvisation is the art of drawing without an eraser.

You don’t chose your inspirations, they chose you.

Music is a calling that you must bring your best to, whether listening, practicing or performing.

Play the music not the instrument.

Jazz improvisation is an elusive genius.

Listening is more important than anything because that’s what music is. Somebody is playing something and you’re receiving it.

I started playing piano when I was 6. And I knew that wanted to be involved in that form of expression, whether it was through music, or acting, or dancing, or painting, or writing.

Unless I really loved it and felt really passionate about it, I would just kind of abort the song and start a new one.

I’ll be writing songs till I die. There’s just no question.

When I start writing songs and it turns into an overly belabored intellectual process, I just throw it out.

If I could sell 500 million records every time, it would be great. But I’ve also had the luxury experience of having it when I was a teenager, in a very kind of model version of it.

Whenever I fill out the job description I put ‘songwriter’, never ‘singer’ or ‘artist.’ Singers come and go.

I’m always interested in looking forward toward the future. Carving out new ways of looking at things.

I see my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament.

Jazz never ends… it just continues.

Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and charm and gaiety to life.

For me, music and life are all about style

..I wanted to create music that was so different that my mother could tell me from anyone else.

I am an improviser, I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it, it’s all improvised music. I may capture it and go back and write it down for others, but it was originally improvised.

Jazz music has become academic. Sometimes that doesn’t feel right to me.