Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance. — Francoise Sagan
Jazz is my adventure. I'm after new chords, new ways of syncopating, new figures, new runs. How to use notes differently. That's it. Just using notes differently. — Thelonious Monk
Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time. — Ornette Coleman
Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now. — Pat Martino
Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you. — Charlie Parker
Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life. — Lester Bowie
No baritone player should be afraid of the noise it makes. Harry Carney isn't! — Pepper Adams
To jazz, or not to jazz, there is no question! — Louis Armstrong
Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm. — Jelly Roll Morton
Jazz will be the classical music of the future. — Dizzy Gillespie
Well, being a jazz musician is not a rose garden! — Toots Thielemans
Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz. — Sonny Rollins
Short Coltrane Quotes
Motion Picture Soundtrack on Kid A was another Coltrane inspiration. — Colin Greenwood
To me John Coltrane was like an angel on earth. He struck me that deeply. — Elvin Jones
Coltrane, you cant play everything at once! — Miles Davis
Coltrane would do what you'd get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians. — Colin Greenwood
When somebody turned me on to a Coltrane record around seventh grade, I took up saxophone. — Tom Verlaine
I took LSD and listened to Coltrane a lot; a lot of people did. — Sam Andrew
Coltrane had a sax, Dale Earnhardt drives a race car and everybody has their tools. — Talib Kweli
Out of Coltrane's whole history, there are things which I think are great from all the periods. — Lee Konitz
Coltrane Image Quotes
John Coltrane Quotes
If there's any such thing as a perfect man, I think John Coltrane was one. And I think that kind of perfection has to come from a greater force than there is here on earth. — Elvin Jones
It's easy to mock a man who has founded a religion based on John Coltrane, who considers 'A Love Supreme,' whatever its merits as a jazz album, to be holy scripture. — Tucker Carlson
He didn't say nothing. He would just do things. He never said nothing or explained nothing. He just would do it and that was it. You were on your own. You had to be very independent being around John [Coltrane]. — Pharoah Sanders
I can't write anything for myself. I can write when I hear like [John] Coltrane play something; I used to write chords and stuff for him to play in one bar. I can write for other people, but I don't never write for myself. — Miles Davis
[John Coltrane] liked my qualities as a person and that's the reason why he let me play with him. It wasn't what I was doing musically or my instrument or anything like that. He let me play whatever I wanted to play. — Pharoah Sanders
In America, for a brief time, people who followed John Coltrane were studied and considered important, but it didn't last long. The result is that the kind of music I played in the '60's is completely dismissed in this country as a wrong turn, a suicidal effort. — Archie Shepp
Lately, Ive been listening to some jazz albums. I love the new Pat Metheny album. John Coltrane. I still like good metal, though! — Geezer Butler
John Coltrane was an addict; Billie Holiday was an addict; Eugene O'Neill was an addict. What would America be without addicts and post-addicts who make such grand contributions to our society? — Cornel West
John Coltrane - I've been listening to the 'Trane again. It blows you away, because I know more now and I hear more now and I had a life that I've lived! — Alan Vega
When I was 12, I began listening to John Coltrane and I developed a love for jazz, which I still have more and more each year. — Wynton Marsalis
I'm not a star. I'll never be a Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley or a Ray Charles. I'm just an imitator, man. I'm doing a very bad imitation on the bass of Jerry Jemmott, Bernard Odum, Jimmy Fielder, Jimmy Blanton, Igor Stravinsky, Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, James Brown, Charlie Parker... the cats, man. I'm just backing up the cats. — Jaco Pastorius
I remember when A love Supreme was released - I heard it at a friends house. ... Man it was incredible. That record sounded different than the rest. I was trying to gather my spirituality together, trying to get an understanding of life ..... I felt Coltrane was the first musician who made a transition from one side to the other. — Maurice White
In short, [Coltrane's] tone is beautiful because it is functional. In other words, it is always involved in saying something. You can't separate the means that a man uses to say something from what he ultimately says. Technique is not separated from its content in a great artist. — Cecil Taylor
John [Coltrane] was like a visitor to this planet. He came in peace and he left in peace; but during his time here, he kept trying to reach new levels of awareness, of peace, of spirituality. That's why I regard the music he played as spiritual music -- John's way of getting closer and closer to the Creator. — Albert Ayler
I like to listed to the adventurous guys - the Coltranes, Miles Davis, the guys who just let it loose. — Herb Alpert
My father was a jazz tenor sax player. He played in a lot of big bands. So I had that sound around me all the time. The first record that really caught my ear was Clifford Brown's 'Brownie Eyes.' I grew up listening to John Coltrane and Illinois Jacquet. This is where I come from... I love improvisational music. — Meshell Ndegeocello
Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less. — Maya Angelou
Make no mistake, this music is for everyone. Jazz is not an exclusive, elite club. Go ahead, listen to your Snoop Doggy Dog, Pearl Jam, Garth Brooks, but add a little Ellington, Basie and Coltrane to your life as well. — Christian McBride
I think we've all had enough of Coltrane saxophonists. There's a case of someone ruining a generation of saxophonists, as Louis Armstrong may have ruined a generation of trumpeters. — Paul Bley
Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups. — Branford Marsalis
It was Miles Davis who took me to New York, and Coltrane was in the band, as well as Paul Chambers, Philly Jo Jones. 'Trane took me aside, and, of course, we did Blue Trane, which was my first album-and that started everything. He had confidence that I didn't have; he saw something that I didn't see. — Curtis Fuller
But you listen to Coltrane and that's something human, something that's about elevation. It's like making love to a woman. It's about something of value, it's not just loud. It doesn't have that violent connotation to it. I wanted to be a jazz musician so bad, but I really couldn't. There was no way I could figure out to learn how to play. — Wynton Marsalis
I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa. — Carlos Santana
For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo. — Cornel West
Everyone on the set has a mobile phone, and I found by pushing a few buttons, they could be programmed into different languages. I fixed Robbie's Coltrane to speak in Turkish. — Daniel Radcliffe
Jazz musicians like John Coltrane needed these very clear titles for their abstract music, and your decision to bring voices into your music as a way to tap into content. It's related to the way my text-based work still functions as abstraction for me. If I repeat a sentence down a canvas, the text starts to smudge and disappear. It essentially becomes an abstract piece. The meaning of the text is still there. — Glenn Ligon
It's interesting to get older and realize that part of your job growing up in this profession is to help the next generation. More and more, with Boyhood and with Ellar Coltrane and with Emma [Watson], I start to see that role. There's no better way. Nobody wants advice, so you can't really give it. You just have to try to wish them well on their journey. — Ethan Hawke
I remember when my father was dying, I remember listening to Bjork, and listening to John Coltrane, and these things, and I don't know why but music has the power to transcend your physical being and take you up just a little bit. — Wayne Coyne
Well, you know, the first step I took was to drop the alto and baritone and concentrate on tenor exclusively, a decision I've never really looked back on with any regret. Another thing was that I was 17 when I moved up there, and my listening had really focused on freer music in the previous couple of years- Coltrane was playing with his expanded group, and everyone was listening closely to that, and we were into Shepp and Ayler as well. — David S. Ware
When Coltrane died, a void appeared in this music that has not been filled yet. He maintained a forward motion in his work and did not look back. — Bill Dixon
John Coltrane, he talks to god. He starts playing his solo, he might play for 14 minutes. For 14 minutes, it seems like he's talking to god, but he always takes a hold of the melody. — Patti Smith
For me, the bold jazz of John Coltrane and Miles Davis reflected the bold attitude in African-Americans finding their political identity and voice. — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have from reading novels. The understatements in the tenor saxophone of Lester Young, the crystal, haunting, forever searching sounds of John Coltrane, and the softness and violence of Count Basie's big band - all have fired my imagination as much as anything in literature. — Ernest Gaines
Style to me is incidental. The British are very adept at creating it for its own sake, but the best style is incidental. John Coltrane had a style but it was totally incidental to what he was. — Tom Verlaine
As much as I think John Coltrane belongs on the list, I think without Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, both of whom defined improvising on the tenor sax, there would not have been the evolution of the craft by John Coltrane. — Herbie Mann
Some musicians, man, you hear the note almost before they hit it. Jimi, Coltrane and Charlie Parker were like that. — Carlos Santana
I take my fundamental cue from John Coltrane that says there must be a priority of integrity, honesty, decency, and mastery of craft. — Cornel West
In Conclusion
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