Ellen Johnson

I love Jazz because it has the perfect balance of discipline and freedom.

Jazz will only go where we the composers and musicians take it. It is up to us.

I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.

Music activates the brain at a high level.

You gotta love livin’, baby, ’cause dyin’ is a pain in the ass.

They’re not particular whether you’re playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.

When you are studying Jazz best thing to do is listen to records and live music as much you can and absorb everything.

I think the idea of a love song has changed. Most of the love songs we all loved as kids would be classified as funeral dirges now, you know, really super slow. I think nowadays the ballad has changed. It can have some up-tempo, some drums, some other things. ‘Forever’ would still be considered a ballad, I guess, but the tempo is probably more of a mid-tempo. The content is love song. I don’t know how to write anything else.

Jazz is America’s classical music.

Jazz has always been a man telling the truth about himself.

I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.

I saw music as a way to entertain people and take them away from their daily lives and put smiles on their faces, as opposed to what I see it being now, which is a way for me to actually communicate, and a way for me to tap into my subconscious.

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

Life is 10% what you make it and 90% how you take it.

When you are so strongly drawn to music, you can’t ‘not’ be a musician.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.