Jazz stands for freedom.
It’s Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, you know. They got a musical mind together and uh, you can’t explain it.
You can be beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than most of your usual ideas.
My dream was to have a steady job, was not to be on the road, to exist like a guy that goes to work as a mechanic or a carpenter and knows he’s gonna have a job.
There’s a way of playing safe and then there’s where you create something you haven’t created before.
No person in their right mind would want to put their family through what I’ve had to put my family through.
I never wanted this kind of life that I’m still living.
I’m not like a legend that – so I’m sort of in the middle in this sort of gray area where, you know, I’m creating music, and I’m not saying there isn’t an audience, because there is; because all of those people go out and spend $80 to $150 on a concert ticket.
Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.
I know what I’ve done for music, but don’t call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.
Jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a look into our redemptive future possibilities.
Keeping your artistic self as creative as possible is a balancing act.
Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one’s own.
You can’t sing about love unless you know about it.
I’m too busy playing. When I’m playing I don’t pay attention to who’s listening. When I was listening I listened to symphony orchestras, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Stravinsky. You don’t listen to one instrument; you listen to music.
Musicians have a really big part to play in spreading messages because they’re able to reach a large portion of people on an emotional level. Artists reach people at their heart; it’s the only time we meet in one place and put our differences aside. When you’re in a forum listening to music, all you feel in that moment is love and the understanding.
We don’t talk music. We just play.
Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.
The greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out.
I learned to play guitar on my lying back while I was bed-ridden. I only thought to record the songs because sometimes I would I couldn’t remember what I had just done. Eventually I started singing, because I thought if I sang it that would help to remember even more. But I wasn’t trying to sing. And then one day-this is really weird -I just wrote a song. It came out at a rapid rate and I recorded it and I listened back to it and was like ‘Wow, it’s a tune’.
I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.
Live music is best! Make plans to get out and support your local Jazz scene.
