Aaron Copland

The prospect of having to sit through one of Rachmaninov’s extended symphonies or piano concertos tends, quite frankly, to depress me. All those notes, and to what end?

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.

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

I hope my recordings of my own works won’t inhibit other people’s performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn’t always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience.

Is there a meaning to music? Yes. Can you state in so many words what the meaning is? No.

Some twenty years ago, during the course of a memorable evening at the Stravinskys’ home in Los Angeles, the venerable maestro turned to me and said in no uncertain terms: ‘My dear, you should conduct your own music. All composers should conduct their own music!

I keep these songs in my head until I get behind the microphone. I never spend more than 30 or 40 minutes singing the vocal or it will sound mechanical. There are always mistakes, but it’s about feeling more than being perfect.

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

If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.

I was probably six years old when I first sang before an audience.

The human being receives the pleasure from music, not from the argument over what it is.

It bugs me when people try to analyze Jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not, it’s feeling.

Jazz singing is like pornography. You can’t say what it is, but you know it when you see it.

There is a time where you’re beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than your usual ideas.

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

If you can’t play the blues, you might as well hang it up.

Anyone who doesn’t give [his debut album, The College Dropout] a perfect score is lowering the integrity of the magazine

Musicians tell me, if what I’m doing is right, they should never have gone to school.

I do Jazz, Blues, Country and so forth. I do them all like a good utility man.

Learn the tunes by playing the masters, learn expression by playing yourself.

Living is easy with eyes closed.