David Sanborn

Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized.

Its all about finding the right note at the right place and knowing when to leave it alone.

You’ve got to be willing to put stuff on the line, otherwise it doesn’t have much meaning.

You never get it figured out. You just keep playing.

It’s either hip or it ain’t.

I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea.

I’m using the insides of sounds to move around in a very subtle way which, I think, ends up being inevitable.

If you can’t get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.

The reward for playing Jazz is playing Jazz.

They’re not particular about whether you’re playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.

How are you going to know what’s new to play if you haven’t listened to everything that’s old?

The way I look at it, they’re all part of my musical diary, and I can listen to any one of them and it will bring up memories of what was going on at that time.

Bass players are always the intellectual kind, but nobody knows it.

Instrumental music can spread the international language.

To the person who uses music as a medium for the expression of ideas, feelings, images, or what have you; anything which facilitates this expression is properly his instrument.

The drummer; he inspired me to play like no one else I have ever met.

..I wanted to create music that was so different that my mother could tell me from anyone else.

They’re singing your praises while stealing your phrases.