Stan Getz

The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception. All you can do is play melody. No matter how complicated it gets, it’s still a melody.

As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.

There are four qualities essential to a great Jazzman: taste, courage, individuality and irreverence. These are the qualities I want to retain in my music.

You can read all the textbooks and listen to all the records, but you have to play with musicians that are better than you.

We made records to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records. I still feel that way. I put out a record because I think it’s beautiful, not necessarily commercial.

I came from an era when we didn’t use electronic instruments. The bass wasn’t even amplified. The sound was the sound you got.

Don’t settle for style. Succeed in substance.

I am attracted to Jazz music for the idea of being in the moment and communicating to people spontaneously.

I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player and a special award in 1961 for quietness.

Don’t be a perfectionist… leave that to the classical musicians.

I’m gonna live till I die.

I love it. When they stop imitating me then I’ll start wondering where I’m going wrong. Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new.

Playing gives me as much good feeling now as it did when I was a bitty kid.

A chimpanzee could learn what I do physically, but it goes way beyond that. When you play, you play life.

If I don’t practice for a day, I know it… for two days, the critics know it… three days, the public knows it.

Mozart in his music was probably the most reasonable of the world’s great composers. It is the happy balance between flight and control, between sensibility and self-discipline, simplicity and sophistication of style that is his particular province… Mozart tapped once again the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breath-taking rightness that has never since been duplicated.

We may not be changing the world dramatically, but we’re improving it one note at a time.

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

There’s nobody plays like me and I don’t play like anybody else.

Even if you have some brilliant jazz ideas, it’s going to be difficult to get them across unless you have 1-a distinctive sound or 2- a loud sound. These are musts.

If you can’t get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.