J. R. Monterose

Musicians have the intimacy of bringing two people together and the aesthetic, romantic transference.

Jazz stresses less on technical exhibitionism and much more on emotional content.

The fact that an artist is experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we’re in it together.

I love it. When they stop imitating me then I’ll start wondering where I’m going wrong. Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new.

Women have not been socialized to play drums. It’s not natural for us to hit thing.

To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel not the way others think you should feel.

You can read all the textbooks and listen to all the records, but you have to play with musicians that are better than you.

I’ve never recorded anything I didn’t like.

Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

Only play what you hear. If you don’t hear anything, don’t play anything.

I am at my core a singer/songwriter a la James Taylor or a la Billy Joel. It’s not that I don’t want to work with people, but I do just love doing my own thing.

You don’t want to play like B. B. King. You want to be you. So what you do is listen to players you like, and try to “borrow” a little bit from each guy. You don’t try to sound exactly like the other guy, you just add the bits to your vocabulary. It’s like learning to read or write.

I’m trying to make music a sensual expression, not and academic experiment.

Everybody did something. It was very entertaining. We had a lot of fun. Lot of fun. And there was no segregation, that I could see. I never saw any.

For me, music and life are all about style