Charlie Hunter

The trio is the biggest sound you can have with the smallest unit.

Look for the one who’s not smiling and play to that person. Once you’ve got that person, you’ve got the whole club.

I was really running a music school back then, because my band wasn’t making any money. I keep talking about money, because most people don’t understand the part of money in running a band.

Jazz is a work in progress. We’ll be defining traditions in Jazz for 200-300 years.

Don’t settle for style. Succeed in substance.

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.

If I don’t learn something new every day, it’s a day lost

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that’s how I ended up just being a saxophone player.

Music should not have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that is required to sound like jazz.

I sought some kind of freedom in music, in the promise of transcendence and the idea that the purity and the innocence of a mythical god could somehow deliver me from darkness.

I’ve never recorded anything I didn’t like.

Jazz means many things to many people, but it’s all about choices.

In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.

A Jazz musician is supposed to find his voice, find his niche and do his thing.

By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

It’s easier to copy someone else than to find out how to avoid sounding like someone else.