Dave Holland

Jazz has such great feeling and emotional content it really doesn’t require technical understanding.

Just allow your feelings to go with the music and you’ll find yourself carried along by it fairly quickly.

I think music needs to be of its time and speak to that time.

The qualities in music I consider most important are beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination and sincerity.

It’s about getting the sound to flow from your body and allowing that sound to get to the piano.

When you listen to someone improvise, the notes that are played are only half the story.

It’s all music.

I tried to connect my singing voice to my guitar an’ my guitar to my singing voice. Like the two was talking to one another.

[on Ornette Coleman] Man, that cat is nuts!

The essentials of Jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing and instrumental personality.

Jazz singing is like pornography. You can’t say what it is, but you know it when you see it.

Jazz stands for freedom.

The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of their instrument.

In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now heaven knows, anything goes.

You just sort of have to play the way you are.

Jazz is all about improvisation and it’s about the moment in time, doing it this way now, and you’ll never do it this way twice. I’ve studied the masters. Why would I want to play ball after the guys who sit on a bench? I want to play like Michael Jordan.

Start well and end well. The middle will look after itself.

What don’t I want to learn? I have how-to books, history, nature. Ain’t nobody here saying, ‘You’d better learn this.’ But I still think I’ve got a head on my shoulders, and it pleases me.