Pat Metheny

The beauty of Jazz is that it’s malleable. People address it to suit their own personalities.

Listening is the key to everything good in music.

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

It is Jazz’s very nature to change, to develop and adapt to the circumstances of its environment.

Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that.

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

Miles’ sessions were not typical of anybody else’s sessions. They were totally unique.

Quiet is the absence of sound. Silence is the presence of silence.

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

Finally Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet. He put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying ‘yes.’

I cringed when I heard myself described as a Jazz singer. I’ve always thought of myself as a Jazz vocalist.

I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy’s playing blues like we play, he’s in high school. When he starts playing jazz it’s like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

I saw a vibraphone for the first time and knew immediately I had found my means of expression.

I don’t consider myself a musician who has achieved perfection and can’t develop any further.

I want to create music that’s therapeutic.

You don’t have to be Picasso or Rembrandt to create something. The fun of it, the joy of creating, is way high above anything else to do with the art form.

Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

What kills me is that everybody thinks I like Jazz.

However it goes, I’ll just keep playing. That’s where the basic satisfaction is at.

I loved Billie Holiday more than any other person other than myself on the stage.