Jazz isn’t a what, it’s a how.
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. Im just going to be expressive through the piano.
It bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. Its not. Its feeling.
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 didnt even want to know about chords or anything – they didnt even want to do anything that anybody had ever done, because they didnt want to be imitators. Well, of course, this is pretty naive but nevertheless it does bring to light the fact that if youre 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 hes going to be a serious jazz player, teaches himself.
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 Tristanos 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 Id ever heard in jazz.
Music comes from the moment, it is spontaneous, it exists at the time it is created.
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.
One of the reasons we’re here is to be a part of this process of exchange.
A movie and a stage show are two entirely different things. A picture, you can do anything you want. Change it, cut out a scene, put in a scene, take a scene out. They don’t do that on stage.
All music is beautiful.
Life is too full of distractions nowadays. When I was a kid we had a little Emerson radio and that was it. We were more dedicated. We didn’t have a choice.
If you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it.
The only thing better than singing is more singing.
A Jazz musician is supposed to find his voice, find his niche and do his thing.
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.
Jazz is the sound of surprise.
I’ve seen myself on those lists of the 100 best guitarists, and if they think that I’m that good, thank them. Thank God for them. But I don’t think so.
I don’t compose. I assemble materials.
If you can’t play the blues, you might as well hang it up.
With the birth of the first artist, came the inevitable afterbirth… the first critic
After two takes you’re imitating yourself.
There’s a lot of recreational Jazz going on, where cats learn a particular style and become sharks on somebody else’s language.
