Sonny Rollins

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

I’m now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be Jazz.

What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don’t think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact. …. Europeans really provided many venues over there and hailed the jazz artists, and a lot of musicians went over there and stayed over there for a long time. A lot of them moved over there, lived over there, and died over there.

Jazz never ends… it just continues.

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

The way I feel today, as long as my health is good and I can handle myself well and people still come to my concerts, still buy my CDs, I’ll keep playing until I feel like I can’t.

The emotional reaction is all that matters.

I don’t need words. It’s all in the phrasing.

Play it f**kin’ loud!

It’s difficult for me to dislike an artist, no matter what he’s creating.

I’m using the insides of sounds to move around in a very subtle way which, I think, ends up being inevitable. I feel its the only solution to that particular problem that I presented myself.

I developed in my head that I’m never any better than my last concert or the last time I played, so it’s like an audition each time. You get nervous just before going onstage. I still have that, but I think it’s more like concern. You’re concerned about the people – like meeting your in-laws for the first time.

Jazz is a beautiful word. I love it.

I’d solo on my guitar; then sing; then solo; then sing some more. one stopped when the other started. That way I felt a continuity, not a conflict, like a wheel that keeps turning. Both sounds – guitar and voice – were coming out of me, but they issued from different parts of my soul.

That’s the thing about jazz: it’s free flowing, it comes from your soul.

You’re just as beautiful as you feel.

You must own it to play it.

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.

Your own music comes out of your head and emotions, but it’s not etched in your system.

Once you have been bitten by the Jazz bug, it is not a choice anymore.