Terence Blanchard

Musicians need to continue higher learning try to expand the pallet.

I worked until I could play and do changes at any tempo in any key and said ‘What else is there?’ Now I’m finding out.

Blow your life through your horn.

I could write six songs in one day with everything that’s going on.

If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.

Many people forget that Jazz, no matter what form it takes, must come from the heart as well as the mind.

Jazz without the Blues is like BBQ without the sauce.

Musicians have a really big part to play in spreading messages because they’re able to reach a large portion of people on an emotional level. Artists reach people at their heart; it’s the only time we meet in one place and put our differences aside. When you’re in a forum listening to music, all you feel in that moment is love and the understanding.

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night, but differently each time.

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

You’re just as beautiful as you feel.

It’s not all smoke and mirrors. Some of it comes from books.

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

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands …If they act too hip, you know they can’t play shit.

I could see that Bukka was born to be a bluesman, and I wondered if the same was true of me. I worried that I didn’t have his talent – or the talent of someone like Blind Lemon or T-Bone. I felt something beautiful inside Bukka’s soul. Even if I didn’t follow his style, I was moved by his sincerity. He loved telling stories, and used his blues to tell them. His blues was the book of his life. He sang about his rough times and fast time and loving times and angry times. He’d entertain at a party for two hundred people with the same enthusiasm as a party for twenty. Bukka gave it his all. His music had a consistency I admired. Like all the great bluesmen, he said, I am what I am. I wondered if I could be that steady and strong.

I’m not thinking about what needs to be on the radio. I’m not thinking about anything other than – I’m just going to let this music come out of me and not have any sort of preconceived notion of what I should do. I’m just going to do it.