D C DowDell

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

While many forms of music may use the dynamic of improvisation, Jazz exemplifies the unique characteristic of collective improvisation.

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

Play the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you play.

A Jazz Diet will make you hipper, thinner, taller, smarter, richer, happier and more attractive to members of both sexes.

It is better to be felt than to be heard.

When I start writing songs and it turns into an overly belabored intellectual process, I just throw it out.

I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That’s when I was born.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.

Music gives us a lot of things and it only wants one thing back… your attention.

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

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.

I have a lot of albums yet to do.

In order to be honest with myself, I have to reveal more of who I am. This is a part of the improv process.

I have no elitist concepts about Jazz. I would not be the musician I am today without experiencing invaluable music styles that are at the roots of African American black life and culture.

Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.

90%, 100% are going there to hear the singing. The story is another thing. Nobody’s interested in the story. Happiness is happiness.

People always ask, “Why jazz?” and I’m like “Why not?” It’s kind of like asking Seurat, “Why so many dots?” I imagine if you asked Bjork, “Why the Tibetan bells?” She’d probably be like “That’s just what I heard.” It’s the same thing. This is just the way I see music.

The way a band works is a metaphor for all sorts of collaborative and larger enterprises that people do.

My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.