Ken Burns

Jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a look into our redemptive future possibilities.

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It’s our great contribution to the arts.

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

There’s so many ways you can hit one note.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

The whole concept for the Yeezus album is that we’re not going to be using CDs in the future and since this is the last time we’re going to see it, this is an open casket for the CD.

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.

Darlin… be-bop is the music of the future.

Jazz improvisation is the art of drawing without an eraser.

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.

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

Whenever I fill out the job description I put ‘songwriter’, never ‘singer’ or ‘artist.’ Singers come and go.

Hipness is not a state of mind, it’s a fact of life.

Jazz is one of the best things that you can find in your life, it can always be your friend.

I had an affinity for music and could play anything I heard on the piano, but I wasn’t scholastically advanced in any way. It was more of a habitual tendency. I would work on weekends at piano bars playing jazz when I was an art student, but the music wasn’t mine – it was covers: everything from Radiohead to really old jazz. But other than that, the only training I had was piano lessons from when I was nine until I was eleven.

For me, the Les Paul is the greatest rock ‘n’ roll guitar of all time. If you’re not playing a Gibson guitar and you’re playing this kind of music, whether it’s punk, metal or anything grounded in rock ‘n’ roll, you’re not really doing it right. I don’t think professionally I’d every play anything else. Gibson, thank you for making greatest guitars ever.

There’s only one bass player in a band. I’m the best bass player of any band I’m in.

The fans dictate to you when you’re done!