Lee Konitz

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be Jazz.

Most jazz players work out their solos, at least to the extent that they have a very specific vocabulary.

Sound is the first thing that we tune into.

Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That’s why I wanted the clarinet.

Don’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain.

I tried to connect my singing voice to my guitar an’ my guitar to my singing voice. Like the two was talking to one another.

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.

Quiet is the absence of sound. Silence is the presence of silence.

Jazz is a complete lifestyle, something that you feel, something that you live.

In this trumpet I hear our icons and the sound of the future.

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

When the music changes, so does the dance.

Art should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise.

The high note is not the only thing.

I just think swing is a matter of some good things put together that you can really pat your foot by. I can’t define it beyond that.

It takes an intelligent ear to listen to Jazz.

You could still improvise but do it with lyrics.

The English pianist Alan Clare was once intrigued with a workman who was carrying out some remodeling inside his house. Clare was playing some recordings, and he began to notice that the workman was whistling along with whatever music he put on – Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, it didn’t seem to matter. Even if he hadn’t heard it before, he had the natural musical ability to follow a melody closely and almost automatically. Clare decided to give him a real test and dug up his recording of Art Tatum doing Tea For Two, with the ground-breaking chord changes Tatum introduced into the tune. The workman never lost a beat nor did he lay out for a bar or two to figure out what was going on. He tracked Tatum flawlessly through all his changes, and when the record ended, he spoke for the first time. He glanced at Clare and with classic English understatement said, ‘Tricky f**ker, ain’t he?’

Everybody ought to have a lower East Side in their life.