Bill Evans

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

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.

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

Especially, I want my work-and the trios if possible-to sing.

Jazz isn’t a what, it’s a how.

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.

A chimpanzee could learn what I do physically, but it goes way beyond that. When you play, you play life.

If I don’t practice for a day, I know it… for two days, the critics know it… three days, the public knows it.

Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that.

Jazz music can relax, soothe and uplift the mind when you absorb it.

You want the audience to feel what you’re doing.

Leo wanted me to be partners with him – for it to be the Fender guitar: the Les Paul Fender. When he approached me with the idea, he brought over a guitar and he gave it to me and I have it here. And I thought, if I’m gonna do this I’m going to go with the biggest company in the world: Gibson. Why should I fool around with some guy who is not a musician – I should go to the Gibson people.

If the bass plays the root, a pianist superimposes a Maj7 built on the 5th and the sax plays the 13th, will hot women notice?

Well if I could play like Wynton Marsalis, I wouldn’t play like Wynton.

I was a nerd academically. But I was also an athlete and a musician. I never wanted to be shut out of any situation. I think it was that more than anything.

Something just grabs you about a song.

A Jazz performance centers upon the process of creation. The final objective is not only the finished product, but the path and process taken towards it.

I let my body play what’s in my heart. I play life instead of notes. I play what I lived.

I started as a writer and when I sent my demos out everyone wanted to know who was singing and if that person wanted a record deal.

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

A series of vibrations. What does it matter, the source of the catalyst?