Bill Evans

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.

To the person who uses music as a medium for the expression of ideas, feelings, images, or what have you; anything which facilitates this expression is properly his instrument.

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.

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

Keep searching for that sound you hear in your head until it becomes a reality.

Talent is cheap, and many talents treat themselves cheaply.

I’ve always liked the Freddie King/B. B. King rich tone, and at the same time, I like the manic Buddy Guy/Otis Rush Strat tone. So I’m always caught in the middle of the Gibson and Fender sounds. If I’m playing my black [Fender] Strat, and I’m in the middle of a blues, I kind of wish I was playing a [Gibson] Les Paul. Then again, if I was playing a Les Paul, the sound would be great, but I’d be saying, “Man, I wish I had the Stratocaster neck!”

They’re not particular about whether you’re playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

It’s spontaneity that has always characterized Jazz music’s finest improvisers.

I never stop being amazed by all the different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a message.

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.

I expect the audience to come up to my level.

I just think swing is a matter of some good things put together that you can really pat your foot by. I can’t define it beyond that.

The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception. All you can do is play melody. No matter how complicated it gets, it’s still a melody.

People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.

The main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It’s useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.

I write songs about real things… The subject dictates the mood and it goes from there, really.

The music scene is more competitive in the States.

Jazz amounts to Blues, your unique sound and the elusive genius of improvisation.

Most of the stuff I learned to play, I learned in high school. I had a band in high school, a jazz-fusion thing, and I was the keyboard player. I was interested in how the instruments worked and the theory behind playing with them.

New artists can own their content and completely build their base and their following without having to sell or be owned by anybody and it creates such a diversity.