Aaron Copland

I would say that a composer writes music to express and communicate and put down in permanent form certain thoughts, emotions and states of being. The resultant work of art should speak to the men and women of the artist’s own time with a directness and immediacy of communicative power that no previous art expression can give.

You may be sitting in a room reading this book. Imagine one note struck upon the piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room – proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle.

It made no sense to ignore them and to continue writing as if they did not exist. I felt that it was worth the effort to see if I couldn’t say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms.

You may feel depressed, but it can’t be so depressing that you can’t move. No, I would say that people create in moments when they are elated about expressing their depression!

But I have always suspected that one could substitute the Minuet of Haydn’s 98th symphony for the Minuet in Haydn’s 99th symphony without sensing a serious lack of coherence in either work.

The main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It’s useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.

My fans are the best in the world! They’ve grown up with me and stayed with me through this entire journey.

I don’t try to please when I play. I try to cure.

I guess you can look at me, and tell I’m the old man. My name is BB King.

Check out the albums, … Check out the live performances. That’s the reality of it all. Music is such an energizing thing.

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I ‘d shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can’t pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that’s how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.

I don’t worry too much about the fundamentalist principles that are in almost any discussion about Jazz.

People will hire you and then tell you not to do what you were doing when they heard you.

By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

I work very hard at being the best musician I can be because I love it.

I just think swing is a matter of some good things put together that you can really pat your foot by. I can’t define it beyond that.

From hard rhythms of Be-bop, the mellow harmonies of Cool, to atonal forays of Free and the Straight Ahead delivery of Modern, it’s all Jazz.

I never really thought about becoming a professional musician.

I would’ve loved to have been in a band, but sadly I just wasn’t good enough.

It’s just exciting to be part of something that is brand-new.

Musicians need enough experience to develop a vocabulary.