Stan Getz

There are four qualities essential to a great Jazzman: taste, courage, individuality and irreverence. These are the qualities I want to retain in my music.

A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other’s ideas.

There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. They are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence. These are the qualities I want to retain in my music.

Musically, I love to talk just off the top of my head and that’s what Jazz is all about.

I learn something new every day.

Records used to be documents, but now record companies want product.

The whole concept for the Yeezus album is that we’re not going to be using CDs in the future and since this is the last time we’re going to see it, this is an open casket for the CD.

The arranger doesn’t get any royalties, but I had so much fun doing it.

I try to practice with my life.

When you hear somebody with balls, that’s me.

You explore beautiful songs and create your own interpretation of them.

The sign of a mature musician is knowing what not to play.

There’s a way of playing safe and then there’s where you create something you haven’t created before.

Back in college, when I got kicked out of school, I was still in school, I’d just written the song that got me my record deal. If I hadn’t gotten kicked out of school I wouldn’t be where I am now. Three months after that, I got my record deal and the rest is history.

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

Jazz amounts to Blues, your unique sound and the elusive genius of improvisation.

Critics don’t buy records. They get ’em free.

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

I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.

The true artform is being a human being.

A series of vibrations. What does it matter, the source of the catalyst?