Lennie Tristano

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

I remember going to sleep many nights with a Gibson catalog, dreaming about getting a Les Paul. I finally did, with a loan from my Dad. It’s a really heavy instrument. But it plays like butter. I met Les backstage at a show once. Jeff Beck made me play ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ for Les, which was a little embarrassing. He changed history, big-time.

A good player can make any instrument sound good.

There are a million good tunes.

Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new.

As a young cellist I had played to an audience that had included Pablo Casals and reacted with poor, nervous playing. Casals sought me out after the concert and praised me highly, somewhat easing the pain and thinking him a very kind man.

We don’t talk music. We just play.

Albert King wasn’t my brother in blood, but he sure was my brother in Blues!

I hope my recordings of my own works won’t inhibit other people’s performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn’t always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience.

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!

I don’t think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.

I try to teach by example and not force ideas on a young musician. We’re here to be part of a process of exchange.

Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself.

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

Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.