Mike Stern

The deeper you get into the music allows the ability to appreciate art and all other forms of expression.

Sometimes there are no gigs, but the main thing is still the music.

I want the music to connect to people; reach people every time I perform.

I can count on one hand the number of instrumental hits there have been over the last 10 years.

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

If a player is pushing their ability, a certain amount of failure is inevitable. Maybe even desirable.

But I have always suspected that one could substitute the Minuet of Haydn’s 98th symphony for the Minuet in Haydn’s 99th symphony without sensing a serious lack of coherence in either work.

I’ve always had a deep love of live performance, it’s when I feel most alive.

The human being receives the pleasure from music, not from the argument over what it is.

Jazz is a music that allows a person to express his deepest, most personal self.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write to ultimately be at peace with himself.

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.

Early on, I figured out that when the top of a guitar is vibrating and a string is vibrating, you’ve got a conflict. One of them has got to stop, and it can’t be the string, because that’s making the sound. So in 1934, I asked the Larson Brothers—Chicago instrument makers—to build me a guitar with a half-inch-thick maple top and no f-holes. They thought I was crazy.

Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music.

It’s always Jazz. You can put a new dress on her, a new hat, but no matter what kind of clothes she’s the same old broad.

I don’t do something because I think it will sell 30 million albums. I couldn’t care less. If it sells one, it sells one.

Talk of God is most often in church. Is there a God outside of church? I hope so. But how should I know? How does anybody know?