Music is interior decoration.
Your humanity is your instrument.
Music should not have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that is required to sound like jazz.
I always think of music as interior decoration. So, if you have all kinds of music, you are fully decorated!
You know the actor John Garfield? In one movie he walked up to this train station, the ticket booth, and the guy says, ‘Yes, where are you going?’ And he says, ‘I want a ticket to nowhere.’ I thought: that’s it. The freedom to do that. I want a ticket to nowhere.
Clouds float in the same pattern only once.
A series of vibrations. What does it matter, the source of the catalyst?
Those who were seen dancing were thought insane by those who could not hear the music.
You can’t explain Jazz to anyone without losing the experience because it’s feeling, not words.
I’ve never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down.
People couldn’t give an F about how many cars you got any more. It’s about the way the music sounds, where you’re going, the experience you’re going to hanging out with your friends, the type clothes that you’re wearing – all of that’s art.
Music does not come to you. You have to come to it and you’ll walk away with something you didn’t have before.
Vocalists must study music and know everything an instrumentalist needs to know.
If the bass plays the root, a pianist superimposes a Maj7 built on the 5th and the sax plays the 13th, will hot women notice?
Art [Blakey] would take young people with a potential and help them develop a voice as a player and as a writer.
The time is now.
I want a kick to my band, but I don’t want the rhythm to hog the spotlight.
Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It’s like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won’t let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you’re allowed to sleep. It’s always in the middle of the night, or you’re half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them…
You have to understand the styles and it’s good to study those that came before us.
Jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.
The drummer; he inspired me to play like no one else I have ever met.
An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.
