D C DowDell

The true musician plays what he/she hears. That cannot be a mistake.

Learn the tunes by playing the masters, learn expression by playing yourself.

Jazz – it takes passion to make it happen!

Jazz improvisation is an elusive genius.

Spontaneously composed music is a counterpoint that has its own rules based on a natural order and intuitive logic.

Music is what feelings sound like.

Music used to be essential and meaningful, but now it’s disposable.

If you’re going to make a mistake, make it loud so everybody else sounds wrong.

The human being receives the pleasure from music, not from the argument over what it is.

You know the actor John Garfield? In one movie he walked up to this train station, the ticket booth, and the guy says, ‘Yes, where are you going?’ And he says, ‘I want a ticket to nowhere.’ I thought: that’s it. The freedom to do that. I want a ticket to nowhere.

All the music that was ever heard came from the inner silence in every musician.

It’s like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something.

Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they’re trying to say with jazz. You don’t need any prologues, you just play. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

Good music is good music and everything else can go to hell.

On my album Here, that’s the first time that I’ve really understood how I could put all the things that were happening in the world and in my life and in our lives as just human beings into one body that was just so powerful and really had a perspective. That was an opening for me and I think that naturally, there is just so much to talk about. I don’t see me getting quiet anytime soon.

I find my inspiration in myself.

The more you listen, the more your hear.

Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That’s why I wanted the clarinet.

The blues was like that problem child that you may have had in the family. You was a little bit ashamed to let anybody see him, but you loved him. You just didn’t know how other people would take it.

I’ll keep evolving and put that into my songs.

But I have always suspected that one could substitute the Minuet of Haydn’s 98th symphony for the Minuet in Haydn’s 99th symphony without sensing a serious lack of coherence in either work.