Bill Evans

When you begin to teach jazz, the most dangerous thing is that you tend to teach style…I had eleven piano students, and I would say eight of them didn’t even want to know about chords or anything – they didn’t even want to do anything that anybody had ever done, because they didn’t want to be imitators. Well, of course, this is pretty naive…but nevertheless it does bring to light the fact that if you’re going to try to teach jazz…you must abstract the principles of music which have nothing to do with style, and this is exceedingly difficult. So there, the teaching of jazz is a very touchy point. It ends up where the jazz player, ultimately, if he’s going to be a serious jazz player, teaches himself.

Despite the fact I’m a professional performer, it’s true that I have always preferred playing without an audience.

Words are the children of reason and therefore can’t translate the feeling of Jazz because they’re not part of it.

Jazz isn’t a what, it’s a how.

You can’t explain Jazz to anyone without losing the experience because it’s feeling, not words.

Art should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise.

I felt a responsibility to present a viable alternative to the popular electric sound.

Play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing even if it does take them 15, 20 years.

Once we’re inside a tune, we can do anything with it.

Jazz is a sideways glance at music. It’s like being an architect, knowing the basis of design but understanding that the façade can be whatever you dream. I’m a free person. I don’t want to be tied down.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

I don’t compose. I assemble materials.

If you have something in your life worth celebrating, you can put it in a blues song.

I can’t sing it straight. I have no choice but to swing it.

End phrases where you feel they should end. Don’t look for resolutions you don’t feel because the books call for them.

After you’ve done all the work and prepared as much as you can, what the hell, you might as well go out and have a good time.

If it ain’t fun, I want no part of it man. That’s the reason I play.

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.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

Difference between sex and love? Well, you’re not always sure you’re in love. But when you’re having sex, there’s really no mistaking it.

Listening is the key to everything good in music.