Keith Jarrett

Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms.

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

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

I’m my own most merciless critic onstage.

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

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.

It is Jazz’s very nature to change, to develop and adapt to the circumstances of its environment.

Music can’t save the world, but can make one a little calmer.

I love songs that are very autobiographical.

If you must listen to bad music, please use headphones.

Jazz will only go where we the composers and musicians take it. It is up to us.

If I’m not a jazz player all the time, I’ve at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.

Well, for me it’s – music is the instrument of life.

Finally Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet. He put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying ‘yes.’

There is something about music that keeps its distance even at the moment that it engulfs us. It is at the same time outside and away from us and inside and part of us. In one sense it dwarfs us, and in another we master it. We are led on and on, and yet in some strange way we never lose control.

I write about moments, and I don’t make blanket statements about anything because no one has all the answers; nobody’s come up with a foolproof way to do anything when it comes to emotions.

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

My chops were not as fast… [but] I just learned more on what was in my mind than what was in my chops. I learned a long time ago that one note can go a long way if it’s the right one, and it will probably whip the guy with twenty notes.

There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead

Jazz is a sideways glance at music. It’s like being an architect, knowing the basis of design but understanding that the façade can be whatever you dream. I’m a free person. I don’t want to be tied down.

What are you going to do when you love music? You can’t stop.