Music is interior decoration.
Your humanity is your instrument.
The word “jazz” means to me no category, but when you get stuck into wanting to do something the way it was with the “jazz emblem” or logo chained around your neck, you play in a frozen moment in time and you keep fermenting the ‘fifties saying jazz should be this way or that. Well, if jazz to me means no category, then I’ve got the green light And if it sounds like.. sounds like.. sounds like, and keeps crossing over, it’s what I wanted to do in the first place. I like the way Stravinsky and those guys did things. They expressed something, if not themselves. In fact, some people talk about expression, but expression really doesn’t mean anything to me because there’s a lot of work which goes into building a drama and then it’s up to other people to offer “expression.” Expression is such a nebulous thing.
You know the actor John Garfield? In one movie he walked up to this train station, the ticket booth, and the guy says, ‘Yes, where are you going?’ And he says, ‘I want a ticket to nowhere.’ I thought: that’s it. The freedom to do that. I want a ticket to nowhere.
A series of vibrations. What does it matter, the source of the catalyst?
Music should not have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that is required to sound like jazz.
Clouds float in the same pattern only once.
You’re just as beautiful as you feel.
A chimpanzee could learn what I do physically, but it goes way beyond that. When you play, you play life.
Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one’s own.
Jazz affirms the noblest aspirations of character, individual discipline, perseverance and innovation.
I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy and Bird.
After two takes you’re imitating yourself.
I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.
Your ear is the final judge to what sounds right and what sounds wrong.
The majority of people mistakenly feel they don’t need a live musical experience.
You give up your own personality when you imitate somebody.
I’m always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I’ve been.
I think that it is important to try to sound like someone, especially early in your development.
It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.
Miles told me not to use vibrato because when you get old, you’re going to shake anyway.
Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.
