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
The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts. — Ken Burns
A jazz musician can improvise based on his knowledge of music. He understands how things go together. For a chef, once you have that basis, that's when cuisine is truly exciting. — Charlie Trotter
Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time. — Ornette Coleman
Jazz shouldn't have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that's required to sound like jazz. For me, the word 'jazz' means, 'I dare you.' — Wayne Shorter
Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge. — Jelly Roll Morton
Improvisation is too good to leave to chance. — Paul Simon
Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now. — Pat Martino
Improvisation is terribly haphazard. — Leo Ornstein
Jazz, like leadership, combines the unpredictability of the future with the gifts of individuals. — Max De Pree
The real power of Jazz is that a group of people can come together and create improvised art and negotiate their agendas... and that negotiation is the art — Wynton Marsalis
Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance. — Francoise Sagan
There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. they are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence. — Stan Getz
Short Jazz Improvisation Quotes
Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life. — Lester Bowie
The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness. — Herbie Hancock
Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz. — Sonny Rollins
Improvisation is the art of being completely O.K. with not knowing what the f— you’re doing — Mick Napier
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
The minute you make a mistake - that's improvisation! — Barry Harris
Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions. — Johnny Griffin
Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking. — Nina Simone
What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on. — Gerry Mulligan
Jazz Improvisation Image Quotes
If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.
Improvisation Quotes
The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations. — Jane Jacobs
The secret of tango is in this moment of improvisation that happens between step and step. It is to make the impossible thing possible: to dance silence. — Carlos Gavito
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. — Sylvia Plath
Jazz is not a what, it is a how.
My game is based on improvisation. Often a forward does not have the time to think too much. You have a second, rarely more, to decide whether to dribble, shoot or pass to the right or left. It is instinct that gives the orders. — Ronaldinho
In the long history of humankind, those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. — James Clear
My school life was very much a wandering experience. I was having trouble in school and I was not making a lot of friends. So coming home and actually improvising on the piano and just coming up with melodies was an escape for me. — Josh Groban
I was improvising before I was reading music. I was just trying to play things on the clarinet by ear. I think my ear is one of my greatest assets. — Pete Fountain
Only someone who is well prepared has the opportunity to improvise. — Ingmar Bergman
I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground. — John McLaughlin
Jazz is all about improvisation and it's about the moment in time, doing it this way now, and you'll never do it this way twice. I've studied the masters. Why would I want to play ball after the guys who sit on a bench? I want to play like Michael Jordan. — Brian McKnight
Improvisational Quotes
Ricardo Montalban is to improvisational acting what Mount Rushmore is to animation. — John Cassavetes
In my live show, it will feel like I'm making up everything as I go, and a lot of it I do. I riff with the audience and see what happens. — James Murray
As an improviser I'm now pretty comfortable with trios, so I'm thinking of working up to quartets. — Fred Frith
Volleyball is one of the most interactive games going. It is a game of intuition, imagination, improvisation - but most of all, of reciprocity - of teamwork. There is no way to free-lance in volleyball. — Marv Dunphy
I wouldn't want the pressure of a Six Feet Under or the pressure of improvising like Curb Your Enthusiasm. — Robert Englund
I allow a lot of room for improvisation and funny stuff. I always feel planned. — Michael Bay
To create characters, one must build background. And one of the tools we use is improvisation. — Harvey Keitel
The best fighters are those who are calm under pressure and improvise when needed. — Joe Rogan
I'm flying by the seat of my pants, never creating with a thought to what's up ahead! — Akira Toriyama
Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation. — W. Somerset Maugham
Improviser Quotes
Composing is a slowed-down improvisation; often one cannot write fast enough to keep up with the stream of ideas. — Arnold Schoenberg
Improvisation is not the expression of accident but rather of the accumulated yearnings, dreams and wisdom of our very soul. — Yehudi Menuhin
Composing is improvisation slowed down. — Wayne Shorter
If the environment permits it, anyone can learn whatever he chooses to learn, and if the individual permits it, the environment will teach him everything it has to teach. — Viola Spolin
Liquid architecture. It's like jazz - you improvise, you work together, you play off each other, you make something, they make something. And I think it's a way of - for me, it's a way of trying to understand the city, and what might happen in the city. — Frank Gehry
To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well. — Isaac Asimov
No, improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing. — Christopher Walken
There's always some room for improvisation. — Satyajit Ray
But no one, when you stop to think, has ever equated abstract expressionism as a movement with jazz music. It's based on improvisation. The rhythms, the personal involvement, all of this is part of the jazz experience. — Romare Bearden
Competence means keeping your head in a crisis, sticking with a task even when it seems hopeless, and improvising good solutions to tough problems when every second counts. It encompasses ingenuity, determination and being prepared for anything. — Chris Hadfield
Improvisions Quotes
Preparation is the be-all of good trial work. Everything else - felicity of expression, improvisational brilliance - is a satellite around the sun. Thorough preparation is that sun. — Louis Nizer
I don't even think you should tell the audience you're improvising. It's like an apology in case it's bad : 'we're just making it up' If the improv isn't better than the rehearsed stuff, then you should just rehearse it. — Keith Johnstone
Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise. — George Gershwin
Improvisation is the courage to move from one note to the next. — Bobby McFerrin
Even if you're improvising, the fact that beforehand you know certain things will work helps you make those improvisations successful. It really helps to have a certain amount of knowledge about musical structure. — John Cale
I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music. — Sonny Rollins
Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself. — Cecil Taylor
General improvisations often give actors an insight beyond their words by helping them to 'see the word' and achieve a reality for the scene. — Viola Spolin
But one of the things I learned from improvising is that all of life is an improvisation, whether you like it or not. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century came out of people dropping things. — Alan Arkin
In improvisation, there is only one time. This is what computer people call real time. The time of inspiration, the time of technically structuring and realizing... the time of playing it, and the time of communicating with the audience, are all one. — Stephen Nachmanovitch
Jazz Musician Quotes
I have no illusions about being a genius musician. I pride myself on being a soldier, a warrior for jazz. I trained a lot of young people, and I've learned my lessons well. I'd like to keep the flame burning. — Phil Woods
My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being...When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups...I want to speak to their souls. — John Coltrane
My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being. — John Coltrane
I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years. — Thelonious Monk
Marijuana is taken by musicians. And I'm not speaking about good musicians, but the jazz type. — Harry J. Anslinger
There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind. — Duke Ellington
The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen. — Duke Ellington
Well, I'm too old to pimp, and too young to die, so I'm just gonna keep playin' — Clark Terry
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. — Louis Armstrong
I never practice my guitar. From time to time I just open the case & throw in a piece of raw meat. — Wes Montgomery
Free Jazz Quotes
I was used to dancing, but only when someone told you what to do. So in the nightclub I was all over the place, I combined everything. Street dance, modern dance, a bit of jazz and ballet, I was Twyla Tharp, I was Alvin Ailey, I was Michael Jackson. I didn't care, I was free. — Madonna Ciccone
Now as jazz musicians we're saying for this society, you can free up your imagination. You can proceed in an area without much information and you can function in an area without much information. — Paul Bley
Footballers can be like artists when the mind and body are working as one. It is what Miles Davis does when he plays free jazz - everything pulls together into one intense moment that is beautiful. — Lilian Thuram
Regarding jam sessions: Jazz musicians are the only workers I can think of who are willing to put in a full shift for pay and then go somewhere else and continue to work for free. — George Carlin
The talking shows are like free jazz. I'm just gonna go out there and blow with the idea of keeping it streamlined and not wasting time. It's wild. And it's a great thing when you see a performer really able to. — Henry Rollins
If jazz education in our colleges were free to all it would provide thousands of good jobs in the music industry which has been taken over by corrupt millionaires and billionaires. — Bernie Sanders
Avant-garde, jazz, pop, classical, country and western, rock, free, straight-ahead, etc. are ultimately meaningless terms in the face of the music being discussed at best - at worst, those terms often serve as code words for what is in fact a cultural / political discussion more than a musical one. — Pat Metheny
Jazz exemplifies artistic activity that is at once individual and communal, performance that is both repetitive and innovative, each participant sometimes providing background support and sometimes flying free. — Mary Catherine Bateson
There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.) And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere. — Donald Miller
That's the thing about jazz: it's free flowing, it comes from your soul. — Billy Crystal
Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music. — Sergei Rachmaninoff
Technically, I'm not a guitar player, all I play is truth and emotion. — Jimi Hendrix
Starting in the middle of a musical sentence and moving in both directions at once. — John Coltrane
There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others. — Harry J. Anslinger
Each man has his own music bubbling up inside him. — Louis Armstrong
Jazz is the favorite music [of America]. It is a type of music invented by [American] Blacks to please their primitive tendencies and desire for noise. — Sayyid Qutb
Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around. — Miles Davis
Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that's what the jazz experts say. — Mahalia Jackson
Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet. — Lee Konitz
Improv Comedy Quotes
We're improv comedians, we're not necessarily actors, we don't come across that way. — Joe Gatto
That's really what 'Jokers' is - an improv show. — James Murray
We did sketch comedy, performed live improv, and then we made the transition to TV with 'Impractical Jokers.' — Joe Gatto
Jokers' is an improv show in disguise. — James Murray
I got involved in improv comedy. It settled me down when I was getting wild. I was sort of an evil teenager smashing up my cars and drinking and driving, let's just say, a lot. — Bruce McCulloch
We're an improv group and a sketch comedy group called the Tenderloins, that's our alter ego. — James Murray
There's sketch, improv, writing, acting, music, and badminton. Those are the seven forms of comedy. — T. J. Miller
I still do live concerts all over the country - about four a month - with singing and characters and improv. It keeps me limber. I'll never lose that. And comedy is still the bread and butter. — Martin Short
All improv turns into anger. All comedy improv basically turns into anger, because that's all people know how to do when they're improvising. If you notice shows that are improvising are generally people yelling at each other. — Albert Brooks
I love physical comedy. I love Oscar Wilde, I love Shakespeare comedies, I love improv. — Elizabeth Banks
In Jazz, improvisation isn't a matter of just making any ol' thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and vocabulary. There's no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others. — Wynton Marsalis
You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it! — Art Tatum
In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds. — Steve Lacy
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
Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own. — Sonny Rollins
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. — Amy Tan
I anticipated all the changes in jazz because they were all problematical things, that I was dealing with myself. In New York in the late '50s, there were a lot of experiments being made on how to avoid playing popular standards and how to get improvising out of those constricting formats. — Paul Bley
I think there are dozens or hundreds of different forms of creativity. Pondering science and math problems for years is different from improvising jazz. Something which seems to me remarkable is how unconscious the creative process is. You encounter a problem, but can't solve it. — Oliver Sacks
And more than anything, I like the improvisation of jazz. That's the same thing with DJ-ing. There's so much improvisation you can do with cuttin' and scratchin' that's reminiscent of jazz music, because it's all about how you feel. You're capturing a vibe and just going with it. — DJ Jazzy Jeff
We always feel pretty creative as far as writing songs. We write them together; we just get in a room, or on occasion in Flea's garage. We just sort of improvise, like jazz musicians. — Chad Smith
The Beatles came and everybody forgot about everything else. That was a friendly, together, hip interpersonal music, introducing electric sustain, and it captured the imagination of everybody. So improvising, even though it was in a very rich period in terms of impact on the public, the '6Os were very hard times on players financially. — Paul Bley
As any jazz musician knows, it takes flexibility and adaptability for improvisation to create beauty. — Doc Childre
I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation. — Warren G. Bennis
As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality. — Mose Allison
There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation. — David Antin
When you listen to someone improvise, the notes that are played are only half the story. — Hubert Laws
Certainly one of the more common experiences in the jazz field is discovering someone new. Improvising musicians are capable of being musical travelers, voyagers. We want to join in on whatever we hear. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape. — Gary Burton
Not with the Rochester Philharmonic, but I formed my own orchestra, made up of musicians from the Eastman School, where I'm on the faculty now, direct the Jazz Ensemble and teach improvisation classes. — Chuck Mangione
Improvisation in the jazz sense - like the business sense - is not formless. It is built on a skill set. Jazz, for example, involves selecting a tune. — John Kao
Music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential. — Archie Shepp
The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation. — Jan Garbarek
I continued studying by myself in the field of jazz with my own technique of improvisation, walking bass lines, rhythms, all kinds of stuff, which I created for myself. — Miroslav Vitous
I just try to do as good job with the material as I can and play some jazz as well, some improvised music, and do that every night. Just see where it goes. — Mose Allison
There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience. — Henri Matisse
Jazz Improvisation means that practice is not as straightforward as it would be when you simply have a score to play. — Ahmad Jamal
Improvising musicians are musical travelers, voyagers. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape. — Gary Burton
Certain music, jazz in particular, has the ability to make you a better citizen of the world. It helps you expand your world view and gives you more confidence in your cultural achievements. Improvisational jazz teaches you about yourself while the swing in jazz teaches you how to work with others — Wynton Marsalis
Jazz music should be inclusive. Smooth jazz to me rules out a certain kind of drama and a certain tension that I think all music needs. Especially jazz music, since improvising is one of the cornerstones of what jazz is. And when you smooth it out, you take all the drama out of it. — David Sanborn
Jazz is a music that really allows a person to express his deepest self, his most personal self - Africa being the primary source of jazz. Naturally, improvisation and swing are a part of jazz, improvisation being the key. — Harold Land
I grew up in the funk, rock and roll, blues and r&b tradition, and I came to this thing we call jazz later. And I came to improvise music from the standpoint of jazz; I was improvising, but within these other genres of music. — Hamid Drake
Jazz vision is the fusion of music and art a real paradox of same-yet different. Here we play in exchanges, like the hardness of the key of c# major and from the softness of Db major - capturing, reflecting and improvising. — Barbara Januszkiewicz
You're just sort of searching for this "thing" and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. All music is imperfect, but in jazz since you're improvising, at least the way I play, I'm trying to follow my train of thought in a solo. — John Abercrombie
The day of the great jazz improviser who doesn't know how to read music is over. — Maynard Ferguson
Of course, right away I got more interested in the far-out jazz than the traditional jazz, so I quickly was turned onto the John Zorn scene and all the wild stuff coming out of New York and Europe. Improvising is a pretty natural thing for me. — Jherek Bischoff
In Conclusion
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