Duke Ellington

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.

Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

Life has two rules: 1. Never quite 2. Always remember 1.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.

When I began listening to saxophones, I was first attracted to Coleman Hawkins.

Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there’s no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.

Music is the most fantastic drug there is!

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.

I don’t care about the rules, if I don’t break the rules at least 10x every song then I’m not doing my job.

I always try to teach by example and not force my ideas on a young musician. One of the reasons we’re here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

In the 1990s, with Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, those really big female artists were very glamorous, it was all about the glamour at that time. And so there was a big switch, the desire to be more who you were, not so beholden to this whole standard of beauty. It was a liberation. You see Mary J Blige – she did the same, wearing the combat boots.

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

The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.

Living is easy with eyes closed.

I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.

Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now.

Sometimes you need to stand with your nose to the window and have a good look at Jazz.

You have to sound sad first, then maybe later you can sound good.

Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection and instrumental precision that I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn’t have.