Bill Evans

I like people who have worked long and hard, developing through introspection and dedication.

I always like people who have developed long and hard, particularly through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think that what they arrive at is, usually, deeper and more beautiful than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning.

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

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

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.

I say this because it’s a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to. You hear musicians playing with great fluidity and complete conception early on, and you don’t have that ability. I didn’t. I had to know what I was doing. And ultimately it turned out that these people weren’t able to carry their thing very far. I found myself being more attracted to artists who have developed through the years and become better and deeper musicians.I believe in things that are developed through hard work.

There’s always this sound out there that’s just a little beyond my reach and that just sort of keeps me going.

I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.

I don’t care about the rules, if I don’t break the rules at least 10x every song then I’m not doing my job.

Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.

Jazz is not a what, it is a how.

The whole thing of being in music is not to control it but to be swept away by it.

You know at an early age if you have a talent for music.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

I think Ive done the best I could have done. But I keep wanting to play better, go further. There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I havent yet done. When I was younger I thought maybe Id reached that peak. But Im 86 now, and if I make it through to next month, Ill be 87. And now I know it can never be perfect, it can never be exactly what it should be, so you got to keep going further, getting better.

To get the music the way you want it, there’s a lot of work involved.

I think that it is important to try to sound like someone, especially early in your development.

It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.

Check out the albums, … Check out the live performances. That’s the reality of it all. Music is such an energizing thing.

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

The inspired moment may sometimes be described as a kind of hallucinatory state of mind: one half of the personality emotes and dictates while the other half listens and notates. The half that listens has better look the other way, had better simulate a half attention only, for the half that dictates is easily disgruntled and avenges itself for too close inspection by fading entirely away.