Bill Evans

Music should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise. It’s easy to rediscover part of yourself, but through art you can be shown part of yourself you never knew existed. That’s the real mission of art. The artist has to find something within himself that’s universal and which he can put into terms that are communicable to other people. The magic of it is that art can communicate to a person without his realizing it.

I went through a lot of mental pains and anguish about choosing between jazz and classical. I realized that where I functioned was where I should be, and where I functioned was in jazz, so that was it.

You never master the instrument. You always just strive to get better.

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.

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

A guy is influenced by hundreds of people and things, and all show up in his work. To fasten on any one or two is ridiculous. I will say one thing, though. Lennie Tristano’s early records impressed me tremendously. Tunes like ‘Tautology,’ ‘Marshmallow,’ and ‘Fishin’ Around.’ I heard the fellows in his group building their lines with a design and general structure that was different from anything I’d ever heard in jazz.

I think I love it more as I get older because I keep getting better on drums, vibes and piano.

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

I don’t think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.

I could write six songs in one day with everything that’s going on.

I wanted to do the music, but not at the expense of being happy.

I’m creating music – it doesn’t matter if anyone else likes it.

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.

Get out there and improvise and take chances and don’t be a perfectionist.

I hear beauty and elegance combined with passion and fire.

I am inclined to just write music and not worry about what people can or can’t do.

Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.

I learned to play guitar on my lying back while I was bed-ridden. I only thought to record the songs because sometimes I would I couldn’t remember what I had just done. Eventually I started singing, because I thought if I sang it that would help to remember even more. But I wasn’t trying to sing. And then one day-this is really weird -I just wrote a song. It came out at a rapid rate and I recorded it and I listened back to it and was like ‘Wow, it’s a tune’.

Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.

People love us when we play what we want to play but we’re starving.

It’s not uncomfortable for me to be a sideman, but I feel more comfortable as a bandleader.