Know the business; you need to know the business side of things.
We all do ‘do, re, mi’ but you got to find the other notes yourself.
There are notes between notes, you know.
To the person who uses music as a medium for the expression of ideas, feelings, images, or what have you; anything which facilitates this expression is properly his instrument.
Let the music speak for itself.
Django Reinhardt was fantastic. he must have been playing all the time to be that good.
Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousnessI wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.
We might as well swing boys, because Stravinsky cuts us all.
How are you going to know what’s new to play if you haven’t listened to everything that’s old?
Ah music… a magic beyond all we do here!
Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.
It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.
I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns.
Musicianship is using your two ears.
What we hear is the quality of our listening.
Jazz is the assassination, the murdering, the slaying of syncopation. I would even go so far as to confess that we are musical anarchists.
When you are so strongly drawn to music, you can’t ‘not’ be a musician.
Why Jazz? This is just the way I see music.
I’ve always wanted a C trumpet on top, to have that same kind of facility without shouting.
You must surrender whatever preconceptions you have about music if you’re really interested in it.
I have a deep respect for harmony, melodic patterns and form.
