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.

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

I’d like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I’ve heard.

Ahhh – those Jazz guys are just makin’ that stuff up!

It doesn’t matter all that much. It’s just that when you’re playing, Stephane, you’ve got both Chaput and me backing you, but when I’m soloing I’ve only got one guitar behind me!

[on Prince] I learned about music that didn’t have any barriers or any kind of, like, containment. I learned about wild, crazy topics and ways to express yourself that had never been written in quite that way before. I learned that a human being could be able to defy all stereotypes, and be the epitome of badassness.

When I start writing songs and it turns into an overly belabored intellectual process, I just throw it out.

A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!

A drummer has to be kind-hearted.

Jazz music is an aural souvenir of mankind’s attempt to express the intangible, the heart, the soul, through art.

It’s easier to copy someone else than to find out how to avoid sounding like someone else.

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

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It’s like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won’t let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you’re allowed to sleep. It’s always in the middle of the night, or you’re half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them…

The only award I’ve ever worked for or wanted really were the ones that were given to me by the fans. So, whether it’s a platinum record or hit songs, those are the ones that last the most.

You can be beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than most of your usual ideas.

Why Jazz? This is just the way I see music.

When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it’s composition. If you don’t understand what it’s about, you’re depriving yourself of being really able to communicate this poem.

Jazz isn’t the kind of music you’re going to learn in 3 or 4 years or get because you have talent for music.