Mike Stern

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

I want people to walk away with the same joy, hope and love that I put into my music.

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

People sometimes say it takes a long time to become a Jazz fan, but for me it took about five seconds.

I don’t like recording studios – except my own, which is just a little room above the garage.

I like to know for whom I’m writing – it makes the composition easier to do.

I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.

Musicians have a really big part to play in spreading messages because they’re able to reach a large portion of people on an emotional level. Artists reach people at their heart; it’s the only time we meet in one place and put our differences aside. When you’re in a forum listening to music, all you feel in that moment is love and the understanding.

Music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential.

How can I turn emotion into knowledge? That’s what I try to do with my horn.

There has always been a tension between Jazz as a commercial music and as an art form.

It could be my British need for discipline that makes me admire the American appetite for freedom and passion.

Especially, I want my work-and the trios if possible-to sing.

I want to create music that’s therapeutic.

It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

I like the music. I love it and live it in fact, but for me the business part just plain stinks.

Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized.

It’s not all smoke and mirrors. Some of it comes from books.