Keith Jarrett

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.

Your own music comes out of your head and emotions, but it’s not etched in your system.

The way I think about the practicing, it is my undercover work.

I cannot say what I think is right about Music. I only know the rightness of it.

If music is sound and came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound.

I don’t like recording studios – except my own, which is just a little room above the garage.

When the label came to me to say, ‘would you like to do another record,’ I said, ‘Well I got these sixteen songs sitting here, so let’s do it.’ And that was pretty much it… I never stopped writing, it’s just the way that the business is now; you just try to find a different model.

We didn’t have any segregation at the Cotton Club. No. The Cotton Club was wide open, it was free

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self- consciousness.

Music gave me the energy to revise, revive myself; renew, rebirth myself. It was a palliative, a relief.

Music should always be an adventure.

I don’t like to hear someone put down Dixieland. Those people who say there’s no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don’t know.

I’ve sung a lot of emotional songs, but when you’re writing it’s very difficult to decide what to reveal.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

I went back and listened to the first three albums I made and tried to figure out what was special about them, why people keep going back to them. I think it was because I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no idea if they were going to play it on the radio or anything. All I did was write songs, so that’s what I got back to.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

Players are coming from other backgrounds: rock, folk, ethnic music. It’s changing Jazz for the better.

In Kansas City joints ran 9pm-5am. Pay was a $1.25 a night but somebody special like Count Basie could command $1.50.

It takes an intelligent ear to listen to Jazz.

Music is the greatest communication in the world.

Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere.