Oscar Peterson

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.

You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz.

Some players get very philosophical and cerebral about Jazz. You don’t need any prologues, you just play.

I don’t believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.

Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they’re trying to say with jazz. You don’t need any prologues, you just play. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

We’re not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.

I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.

Jazz never ends… it just continues.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

A wise man practices slowly; but a wiser man practices even slower.

I decided that I would be one of the biggest new names; and I actually had some little fancy business cards printed up to announce it, ‘Count Basie. Beware, the Count is Here.

I don’t care much about music. What I like is sounds.

You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and be yawning your head off.

You don’t want to play like B. B. King. You want to be you. So what you do is listen to players you like, and try to “borrow” a little bit from each guy. You don’t try to sound exactly like the other guy, you just add the bits to your vocabulary. It’s like learning to read or write.

I don’t really live like a musician myself. I think music is just something that I do, but I’d like to be doing lots of other things. I like to cure all kinds of illness.

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

In a way, I started out to be a baritone player.

You’re just as beautiful as you feel.

I wasn’t interested in practicing Bach; I was too busy digging Horace Silver!

I say this because it’s a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to. You hear musicians playing with great fluidity and complete conception early on, and you don’t have that ability. I didn’t. I had to know what I was doing. And ultimately it turned out that these people weren’t able to carry their thing very far. I found myself being more attracted to artists who have developed through the years and become better and deeper musicians.I believe in things that are developed through hard work.

Jazz music has always been a place where anything is possible.