Marilyn Crispell

If you’re making money people don’t think you’re playing Jazz. When you’re not making money they think you’re a great Jazz musician.

I thought I had swell ideas and wonderful musicians but no one else did.

The fact that an artist is experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we’re in it together.

Dizzy used to tell me I’m playing too hard. He’d say to not give everything. Miles told me that too.

Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.

I love to hear the note sing.

First I was working on classical music that didn’t move me at all. I hated it. So I decided to discover the kinds of classical music that did move me—like Chopin, Satie, Beethoven, and certain Mozart songs. Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy and it made me feel something. That’s when I realized music was inside me.

Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music.

To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel not the way others think you should feel.

People involve themselves with the superficiality of Jazz without digging for its soul.

It could be my British need for discipline that makes me admire the American appetite for freedom and passion.

If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.

I don’t believe music can be free unless it has something to be free from.

I think we musicians are emissaries. Every time we go before the public, we’re there to make converts.

[on Prince] I learned about music that didn’t have any barriers or any kind of, like, containment. I learned about wild, crazy topics and ways to express yourself that had never been written in quite that way before. I learned that a human being could be able to defy all stereotypes, and be the epitome of badassness.