Bill Evans

Jazz is not a what, it is a how.

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.

Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument.

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

I’m believe that all people are in possession of what might be called a ‘universal musical mind.’

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.

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

As far back as I can remember, singing was in my blood. My parents loved music, and I loved to sing. I was scatting at an early age.

Jazz singing is like pornography. You can’t say what it is, but you know it when you see it.

I’m going to make music out of whatever style it is, being true to the artform itself.

I would like you to know, I am a doctor of music.

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know

I thought of nothing else but rock ‘n’ roll; apart from sex and food and money–but that’s all the same thing, really.

Jazz is a complete lifestyle, something that you feel, something that you live.

It made no sense to ignore them and to continue writing as if they did not exist. I felt that it was worth the effort to see if I couldn’t say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms.

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

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

In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it’s a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don’t listen.

Jazz is not a what, it is a how.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking… The new inventive phrases we make up to describe things – all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.