Bill Evans

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

Jazz is not a what, it is a how.

Talent is cheap, and many talents treat themselves cheaply.

I’m… a rather simple person with a limited talent and perhaps a limited perspective.

Perhaps it is a peculiarity of mine that despite the fact that I am a professional performer, it is true that I have always preferred playing without an audience.

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

I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about… Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important.

Joe’s been my drummer for 14 years, and we’ve been buddies for six years.

There are no natural barriers. It’s all music.

The blues was bleeding the same blood as me. The blues didn’t have to explain the mystery of pain that I felt; it was there in the songs and voices of singers like Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, in the cries of their guitars.

I kinda went back to that period between ’88 and ’94 where I felt like I was the most creative, without being hindered by powers that be. I was no longer going to try to hinder myself to what I thought was going to be on the radio.

People like the idea of the trio and so I did mostly trio.

Music can’t save the world, but can make one a little calmer.

Yeah, it’s more like playing what you think is appropriate for the moment, not forcing any particular style.

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being.

I have a sense of the importance of music and how powerful it is to bring people together.

I did go through a trial-and-error period where I tried out lots of different guitars, but within a couple of years I was right back to the Les Paul. From that point it’s stayed with me ever since. I have other guitars—and I love a lot of them—but I’m most at home on a Les Paul. It’s interesting: most of the time I would even rather make a Les Paul do the things those other guitars do. From the get-go, the Les Paul spoke to me.

How do I know why Miles walks off the stage? Why don’t you ask him? And besides, maybe we’d all like to be like Miles, and just haven’t got the guts.

People now have been conditioned to believe they should only buy one song at a time, that nobody can make an entire record that would merit you paying, you know, $7, $8, $10 when CDs in the ’90s were $18, $19 and people bought millions and millions and millions of them.

Jazz music will continue to thrive, possibly in unexpected ways.

There is no truer truth obtainable by man than comes of music.