Bill Evans

Jazz is a mental attitude rather than a style. It uses a certain process of the mind expressed spontaneously through some musical instrument. I’m concerned with retaining that process.

Talent is cheap, and many talents treat themselves cheaply.

When you begin to teach Jazz, the most dangerous thing is to teach style.

I’m using the insides of sounds to move around in a very subtle way which, I think, ends up being inevitable. I feel its the only solution to that particular problem that I presented myself.

Jazz music has always been a place where anything is possible.

You give up your own personality when you imitate somebody.

Of the whole bunch of guys who play hollow body guitar, I think Herb Ellis has the most drive.

He knows I rip him off every day. He’s the godfather for me. Nobody can say they aren’t influenced by what Stevie Wonder has done.

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

I think when my brother (Claude who founded vocal sextet Take Six) got his deal and I saw him on the Grammys that was when I said, ‘oh, you know what? If he can do it then maybe I can do too’ and that’s when I really focused on trying to make it in this business.

If you listen to Donny Hathaway, he had a lot of jazz elements in the way he sang, … For me, the two styles borrow from each other so much that sometimes it’s hard for me to make a distinction. When you hear Lalah sing the combination, that’s when she really shines – when she’s allowed to dip into her jazz when she wants to and then get soulful and do the R ‘n’ B thing.

The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument. This is a comprehensive technique . . . a feeling for the keyboard that will allow you to transfer any emotional utterance into it. What has to happen is that you develop a comprehensive technique and then say, forget that. I’m just going to be expressive through the piano.

Sometimes it’s to your advantage for people to think you’re crazy.

Everybody did something. It was very entertaining. We had a lot of fun. Lot of fun. And there was no segregation, that I could see. I never saw any.

So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.

Jazz music is our original American culture.

Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers.

The main thing is you want to emote.

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.