Pat Metheny

I don’t worry too much about the fundamentalist principles that are in almost any discussion about Jazz.

Jazz is an idea that is more powerful than the details of its history.

My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener.

Listening is the key to everything good in music.

Jazz music will continue to thrive, possibly in unexpected ways.

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

Well if I could play like Wynton Marsalis, I wouldn’t play like Wynton.

If you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it.

I met up with George Shearing about a year before my mother passed away. When I was 11 years old, Mama took me to the Edgewater Inn in Seattle and I was able to sit down and play piano for George and a lot of (the set list) was songs I had heard from the album, ‘Concerto For My Love.’ Then, after Mama died, my dad and I went to actually hear him perform at the Edgewater Inn when I was 12. Oh my gosh! It just really got me into playing piano.

The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception. All you can do is play melody. No matter how complicated it gets, it’s still a melody.

To imitate someone is to insult them.

I never thought about being famous or rich. I just thought, Oh, I’ll get a nice little girl and go and play every night, and I’d be happy. And that worked for a while. But the little girl’s mother didn’t trust a guy with a horn.

Music is an addiction.

With songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio I’m teeming with the drive to write.

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one’s own.

It is this tendency to play with manic enthusiasm on every possible occasion that distinguishes the amateur Jazz musician from the professional.

It’s not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.

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

I’ve never recorded anything I didn’t like.

Last time I saw Count Basie, he was in a wheelchair. They wheeled him up onto the stage, he sits down at the piano, and he gives the downbeat, and that band played like they were in heaven. And right in the middle, the band cuts. He had to take one hand and put the other on it, and he comes down with one note. And it was the greatest note I ever heard in my life.

Music chooses her musicians.