D C DowDell

10% of musicians make 90% of the money, while the remaining 90% of musicians make the 10% that’s left.

Jazz improvisation is the art of collective negotiated expression.

Jazz goes into my coffee in the morning, in my wine at night.

Live music is best! Make plans to get out and support your local Jazz scene.

The true value of this music lies in an artist’s individual creativity and that unique process of expression which is Jazz.

My neighbors always listen to very hip Jazz… whether they like it or not.

One of the problems of people who live with pain is that they spend the whole day thinking about it, and it’s exasperating. But even when I am having a bad moment and I can’t get myself together, I get on stage and for an hour or two the pain becomes super-small. It’s about controlling the mind, telling the pain to step aside. Music does that. It’s the most fantastic drug in the world.

When you make a sound, it carries on to infinity. Sound is a vibration. Vibration is energy. All of that survives in space long after we’re dead. When I walk on stage at the Wiener Staatsoper, I can feel the footsteps of Chopin and Rachmaninov.

I always make it a point to pick songs on which players really shine.

Always keep reaching.

Jazz never ends… it just continues.

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.

It’s easy in music to tell what’s good. It’s hard to tell what’s bad.

Words are the children of reason and therefore can’t translate the feeling of Jazz because they’re not part of it.

I’m fascinated with the electronic devices that we can mess around with.

A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music.

[on Prince] I learned about music that didn’t have any barriers or any kind of, like, containment. I learned about wild, crazy topics and ways to express yourself that had never been written in quite that way before. I learned that a human being could be able to defy all stereotypes, and be the epitome of badassness.

If you got up on the bandstand at Minton’s and couldn’t play, you might get your ass kicked.

I’m a musician at heart, I know I’m not really a singer. I couldn’t compete with real singers. But I sing because the public buys it.

I’m creating music – it doesn’t matter if anyone else likes it.

I’m a fan first. I believed Duke Ellington when he said there’s no bad music, just some of it is presented badly. As a kid, hanging around Church Street, the presentation of music was so powerful, I couldn’t help but jump for joy. I had discovered art, or truth, or whatever you want to call it; I had seen a light I’d follow forever.