Jazz is rhythm and meaning.
There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.
Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.
If music is sound and came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound.
It’s a matter of who would be right for each song. Mickey Hart for All We Need is An Island’ – he’s the only guy I know who has Tahitian drums and every kind of drum on the planet.
I don’t have to lay on the couch and see a therapist because my therapy is in art.
We may not be changing the world dramatically, but we’re improving it one note at a time.
As far back as I can remember, singing was in my blood. My parents loved music, and I loved to sing. I was scatting at an early age.
But I have always suspected that one could substitute the Minuet of Haydn’s 98th symphony for the Minuet in Haydn’s 99th symphony without sensing a serious lack of coherence in either work.
I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else? I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn’t play it.
I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.
Jazz to me is a living music. It’s a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.
The minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.
We didn’t have any segregation at the Cotton Club. No. The Cotton Club was wide open, it was free
It’s important to find your own voice and do something of your own.
I feel I have only scratched the surface of what I know I am capable of doing.
I’ve had a lot of things to be proud of in my life, but none more than the Jazz festival.
