Gerry Mulligan

Eliminating the piano means that I’ve always worked closer with the bass than most players.

It’s true I’ve always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

I’m fascinated with the electronic devices that we can mess around with.

Jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

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

I’ve always wanted a C trumpet on top, to have that same kind of facility without shouting.

Some players get very philosophical and cerebral about Jazz. You don’t need any prologues, you just play.

I’m not really on a mission to tell anybody anything. I’d rather be figured out.

As long as you’ve got your horn in your mouth, you’re developing.

Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.

I got out of the car and there was a knife in my neck. The guy says, “Don’t move.” And the drummer got out of the car, and he got a gun in his head. This was my entrance to the South Side of Chicago. But it was necessary, because I wanted to play jazz.

When you’re on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn’t exactly a sound – it’s a hum, like the streets.

Music is a reservoir… of sounds.

The spirit of Jazz is the spirit of openness.

I am an improviser, I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it, it’s all improvised music. I may capture it and go back and write it down for others, but it was originally improvised.

I don’t think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.

Music is my life, professionally, for nearly 60 years. To be recognized by the academy is still the highest honor.

Jazz is the false liquidation of art, instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.

I don’t know where Jazz is going. Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.

If you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it.

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