Keith Jarrett

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

Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms.

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.

Once we’re inside a tune, we can do anything with it.

Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.

I’m my own most merciless critic onstage.

Once you start collecting records you learn more and more about Jazz and Blues.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

For a long time I wasn’t listening to music, to the rock and roll stuff on the radio, because it would cause me to get sweaty–it would bring back memories I didn’t want to know about, or I would get that feeling that I’m not alive ’cause I’m not making it. And if it was good, I hated it ’cause I wasn’t doing it. And if it was bad, I was furious ’cause I could’ve done it better…

At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage.

The trio is the biggest sound you can have with the smallest unit.

It’s very difficult for me to dislike an artist. No matter what he’s creating, the fact that he’s experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we’re in a brotherhood of some kind… we’re in it together.

All that I’ve played, all that I’ve sung, I couldn’t have done any other way.

I’m too busy playing. When I’m playing I don’t pay attention to who’s listening. When I was listening I listened to symphony orchestras, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Stravinsky. You don’t listen to one instrument; you listen to music.

I think that those elements – light and sound – are beyond democratic. They’re into the creative part of life.

I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel.

I did go through a trial-and-error period where I tried out lots of different guitars, but within a couple of years I was right back to the Les Paul. From that point it’s stayed with me ever since. I have other guitars—and I love a lot of them—but I’m most at home on a Les Paul. It’s interesting: most of the time I would even rather make a Les Paul do the things those other guitars do. From the get-go, the Les Paul spoke to me.

Critics get a little carried away with what someone should have done, rather than what he did.

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.

I don’t pop my cork for every man I see.

No, working is what will keep you alive.