Chick Corea

My one thing is I continue to be interested and want to be a student. I don’t want to be a master. When I’m learning something, I’m in my element.

Without a doubt, my richest relationships are my long-term friendships with musical partners, because we make music together. That’s what we love to do with our lives.

It’s difficult for me to dislike an artist, no matter what he’s creating.

It’s very difficult for me to dislike an artist. No matter what he’s creating, the fact that he’s experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we’re in a brotherhood of some kind… we’re in it together.

Miles Davis was a part of my life from 1947 on. I was born in 1941 and I first heard him in 1947 on a 78 rpm. And then I followed his career, starting with his first solo album in 1951. He was an icon and inspiration and a mentor to me.

I call myself a teacher because they want me to call myself a teacher, but actually, what I’m doing is I’m studying.

I used to play – when I first started trying to be professional, I disk jockey from 1949 to 1955 in Memphis, Tennessee, and I was quite popular there as a disk jockey.

We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.

It’s not what you do, but the way you’re doing it and in the end that’s all that we have.

Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new.

You can’t copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling.

You can’t explain Jazz to anyone without losing the experience because it’s feeling, not words.

I could write six songs in one day with everything that’s going on.

When you listen to a pianist, each notes should have an identity, each note should have a soul of its own.

Get around, be on the scene, play it clean, be seen, be keen and be over eighteen.

My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man and bring tears to the eyes of woman.

Composing is a mindset, a part of who I am.

Mozart in his music was probably the most reasonable of the world’s great composers. It is the happy balance between flight and control, between sensibility and self-discipline, simplicity and sophistication of style that is his particular province… Mozart tapped once again the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breath-taking rightness that has never since been duplicated.

I have to be a star like another man has to breathe.

Have you ever wondered why young people take to music like fish to water? Maybe it’s because music is fun, plain and simple.