Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music.
— Sergei Rachmaninoff
Courageous Jazz And Life quotations
Over all, I think the main thing a musician would like to do is give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things that he knows of and senses in the universe. . . Thats what I would like to do. I think thats one of the greatest things you can do in life and we all try to do it in some way. The musicians is through his music.
Each man has his own music bubbling up inside him.
If I don’t practice for a day, I know it.
If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it.
All a musician can do is to get closer to the source.
Master your instrument. Master the music. And then forget all that bullshit and just play.
The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons.
The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons.
Hipness is not a state of mind, It's a fact of life!
Jazz washes away the dust of every day life.
The whole of life itself expresses the blues.
That's why I always say the blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling and understanding. The blues can be about anything pertaining to the facts of life. The blues call on God as much as a spiritual song do.
Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread--without it, it's flat.
Whatever I'd say would be an understatement.
I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.
Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life.
Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now.
Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.
My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often - in fact, mostly - at the expense of everything else in my life.
Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.
You can not ignore his current life. Bowie has become a family man and enjoys to see his children grow up close to him. But after six years he feels the urge to get in the studio with musicans he likes. He closely follows bands like Arcade Fire in recent months. But he is inspired by ancient Chinese folk and jazz these days as well.
The idea is more important than the style you're playing in.
Humans are imperfect. That's one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We're on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.
The idea is more important than the object.
If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
Let your life be your music and let your music be your life.
In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am.
When people ask me how is it I was a musician, I facetiously say that I'm a firm believer in reincarnation and in a previous life I was Johann Sebastian Bach's guide dog.
I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.
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.
...to me if it's anything, jazz is a verb-it's more like a process than it is a thing.
Making the simple complicated is commonplace.
From early on there were two things that filled my life - music and storytelling, both of them provoked by my father. He was a jazz pianist and also a very good storyteller, an avid reader. He passed both those interests on to me.
Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.
There is no truer truth obtainable by Man than comes of music
They tell me Wagner's music is better than it sounds.