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 music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm. — Jelly Roll Morton
To jazz, or not to jazz, there is no question! — Louis Armstrong
Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time. — Ornette Coleman
Well, being a jazz musician is not a rose garden! — Toots Thielemans
I like jazz, but I could never play it. You just sit there with a guitar the size of a Chevy on your chest, wearing a stupid hat, playing the same solo for an hour. — Dave Mustaine
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
Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life. — Lester Bowie
There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. they are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence. — Stan Getz
Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance. — Francoise Sagan
You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail. — Charlie Parker
Jazz is one of the best things that you can find in your life, it can always be your friend. — George Gershwin
What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on. — Gerry Mulligan
Short Playing Jazz Quotes
Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking. — Nina Simone
Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now. — Pat Martino
Jazz is freedom. You think about that. — Thelonious Monk
Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions. — Johnny Griffin
The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness. — Herbie Hancock
Jazz, like leadership, combines the unpredictability of the future with the gifts of individuals. — Max De Pree
Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz. — Sonny Rollins
You don't rehearse jazz to death to get the camera angles. — Stan Getz
Jazz will be the classical music of the future. — Dizzy Gillespie
Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you. — Charlie Parker
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
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
Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one. — Miles Davis
My brother had a big band in high school; after that we continued to play together, eventually forming a group called the Jazz Brothers, that recorded for Riverside Records. — Chuck Mangione
Regardless of what you play, the biggest thing is keeping the feel going. — Wes Montgomery
Master your instrument. Master the music. And then forget all that bullshit and just play. — Charlie Parker
It's the honesty you apply to your playing that makes music enjoyable. The style of the music has little to do with it. It's only honesty makes it beautiful. — Elvin Jones
Playing Jazz Image Quotes
You only live once. You don't want your tombstone to read: Played it safe.
Playing Cards Quotes
Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game. — Voltaire
Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will. — Jawaharlal Nehru
Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well. — Jack London
Never allow the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.
Just because Fate doesn't deal you the right cards, it doesn't mean you should give up. It just means you have to play the cards you get to their maximum potential. — Les Brown
Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died. — Steven Wright
She and my uncle were very sociable and would have a lot of people over at night to play cards or whatever. The high spot of those evenings was when we kids got dressed up to do a skit or something to amuse the guests. I loved it. — Louise Fletcher
Never change your originality for the sake of others. Because no one can play your role better than you.
We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. — Randy Pausch
In the abstract, life is a mixture of chance and choice. Chance can be thought of as the cards you are dealt in life. Choice is how you play them. I chose to investigate blackjack. As a result, chance offered me a new set of unexpected opportunities. — Edward O. Thorp
In the abstract, life is a mixture of chance and choice. Chance can be thought of as the cards you are dealt in life. Choice is how you play them. — Edward O. Thorp
Jazz Music Quotes
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
Starting in the middle of a musical sentence and moving in both directions at once. — John Coltrane
We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand ~Randy Pausch
There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind. — Duke Ellington
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
The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen. — Duke Ellington
Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes difference.
Each man has his own music bubbling up inside him. — Louis Armstrong
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
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 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
Marijuana is taken by musicians. And I'm not speaking about good musicians, but the jazz type. — Harry J. Anslinger
Well, I'm too old to pimp, and too young to die, so I'm just gonna keep playin' — Clark Terry
Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around. — Miles Davis
After the war, once the bop revolution had taken hold, there were all kinds of young musicians, talented young musicians, who were ready for this fusion of classical and jazz. — Gunther Schuller
There's a category for me. I like to be referred to as a good singer of good songs in good taste. — Sarah Vaughan
I don't think of work as work and play as play. It's all living.
As far as being a 'player's player,' you've only got to go to Nashville or Argentina and you can forget about it. The world is full of amazing guitar players, and you know it, and I know it...it's a humbling experience. — Mark Knopfler
A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality. — Glenn Miller
All a musician can do is to get closer to the source. — John Coltrane
Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life. — Sonny Rollins
Jazz Quotes
I don't believe that jazz will ever really die. It's a nice way to express yourself. — Chet Baker
When I was a kid, some of the guys would try to get me to hate white people for what they've been doing to Negroes, and for a while I tried real hard. But every time I got to hating them, some white guy would come along and mess the whole thing up. — Thelonious Monk
In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it's a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don't listen. — Chet Baker
It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy.
Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that's what the jazz experts say. — Mahalia Jackson
Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz. — Dave Van Ronk
Just because you're not a drummer doesn't mean you don't have to keep time. — Thelonious Monk
Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet. — Lee Konitz
I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism. — Don Delillo
I never even thought about whether or not they understand what I'm doing . . . the emotional reaction is all that matters as long as there's some feeling of communication, it isn't necessary that it be understood. — John Coltrane
A note can be as small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination. — Thelonious Monk
Jazz And Life Quotes
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. — Imamu Amiri Baraka Jones
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. — Amiri Baraka
Jazz washes away the dust of every day life. — Art Blakey
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. — Willie Dixon
Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread--without it, it's flat. — Carmen McRae
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. — John Coltrane
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. — Stan Getz
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. — Duke Ellington
The idea is more important than the style you're playing in. — Ornette Coleman
Playing Music Quotes
The guitar is the easiest instrument to play and the hardest to play well. — Andres Segovia
It's a dream come true, and with this music, with this Rossini, it's unbelievable how to express the joy and express the joy of the situation and the joy to play this music, to sing this music, it's really fantastic. — Cecilia Bartoli
My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. To tell the truth, there's hardly a difference. — Harry S. Truman
Music is a spiritual thing, you don't play with music. If you play with music you will die young. You see, because when the higher forces give you the gift of music...musicians hip, it must be well used for the gift of humanity. — Fela Kuti
Life and love go on, let the music play. — Johnny Cash
We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the cosmos. We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music. — Albert Einstein
Count your blessings. Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move forward the life that God intended for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence. — Og Mandino
It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself. — Johann Sebastian Bach
In string theory, all particles are vibrations on a tiny rubber band; physics is the harmonies on the string; chemistry is the melodies we play on vibrating strings; the universe is a symphony of strings, and the "Mind of God" is cosmic music resonating in 11 dimensional hyperspace. — Michio Kaku
Everybody started calling my music rock and roll, but it wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playing down in New Orleans. — Fats Domino
Jazz And Blues Quotes
My baby lives in shades of blue, blue eyes and jazz and attitude. — Lana Del Rey
The blues is the foundation, and it's got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock 'n' roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues. — Luther Allison
All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues. — Mose Allison
I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture. — Etta James
My father's rich, my momma's good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I've never suffered and don't intend to suffer. — Miles Davis
When I die, I want them to play The Black and Crazy Blues, I want to be cremated, put in a bag of pot and I want beautiful people to smoke me and hope they got something out of it. — Rahsaan Roland Kirk
I like a very dark house, just black. I sit there and just think. Once I'm still and quiet inside, I'll begin. It's very personal; it has to be. One song may be Bach, the next blues, a song from TV, or a nursery rhyme or jazz piece. — Bobby McFerrin
It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception. — Albert Einstein
As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music. — Edgar Winter
I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice. — Boz Scaggs
Jazz Band Quotes
I suppose subconsciously I was thinking in terms of having the scale of it matching the scale of the images. Hence the sort of string quartet, jazz band and electronic stuff. — Jonny Greenwood
I was in every band class I could get in, like after school jazz band and marching band, and that's where I really learned to read music from elementary all the way through junior high and high school. — Chad Smith
I used to sing with my father's jazz band and then when I was ten years old a musician friend of his suggested that I try out for the first west coast production of Annie. — Molly Ringwald
Communication is the essential medium of a creative culture: the communal sea in which we all swim. A company that can't communicate is like a jazz band without instruments: Music just isn't going to happen. — John Kao
I wonder what an agent would do if he had to travel with the band he's booking. — Mary Lou Williams
You know somethin', man? Some day I'm gonna be walkin' up the street one way and you're gonna be comin' down the other way, and we're gonna pass each other and I'm gonna say 'Hello, best white band in the world' and you're gonna say 'Hello, best colored band in the world. — Chick Webb
Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," a song that was written for Simone, she confronted the band's lead singer, Eric Burdon. "So you're the honky," she said, "who stole my song and got a hit out of it? — Nina Simone
Shared leadership... is less like a an orchestra, where the conductor is always in charge, and more like a jazz band, where leadership is passed around ... depending on what the music demands at the moment and who feels most moved by the spirit to express the music. — Phillip C. Schlechty
It's just music. It's trying to play clean and looking for the pretty notes. The beat in a bop band is with the music, against it, behind it. It pushes it. It helps it. Help is the big thing. It has no continuity of beat, no steady chug-chug. Jazz has, and that's why bop is more flexible. — Charlie Parker
Most of the stuff I learned to play, I learned in high school. I had a band in high school, a jazz-fusion thing, and I was the keyboard player. I was interested in how the instruments worked and the theory behind playing with them. — Brian McKnight
Smooth Jazz Quotes
The whole rise of new adult contemporary music and smooth jazz was a nice surprise. — Kenny G
Jazz is smooth and cool. Jazz is rage. Jazz flows like water. Jazz never seems to begin or end. Jazz isn't methodical, but jazz isn't messy either. Jazz is a conversation, a give and take. Jazz is the connection and communication between musicians. Jazz is abandon. — Nat Wolff
I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch. — Count Basie
Whoever invented smooth jazz, man, I wanna kill 'em: You're turning an art form into a hooker. — Phil Woods
I couldn't get my album played over the so-called smooth jazz stations. Jazz stations would not play it. You don't always know who you're making that soul connection with. — Roy Ayers
People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play. — Roy Ayers
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
Well, I guess my unease with that is... I'm always a little uneasy with that phrase - smooth jazz, as opposed to what? — David Sanborn
I find that jazz loosens up the deep place of my mind, lets me find my own strange rhythms. Generally, I find the knottier the jazz, the better. Anything with singing is a distraction. Listening to classical music tends to have the unconscious effect of making my writing too smooth. — Paul Lynch
Dinner 'conversation' at the Cohens' meant my sister, mom, and I relaying in brutal detail the day's events in a state of amplified hysteria, while my father listened to his own smooth jazz station in his head. — Andy Cohen
Jazz Records Quotes
I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz. — Sonny Rollins
When you are studying jazz, the best thing to do is listen to records or listen to live music. It isn't as though you go to a teacher. You just listen as much as you can and absorb everything. — Carla Bley
I always hated jazz guitar. I loved jazz saxophone but I hated jazz guitar. If I would buy an organ trio record I would make sure I'd buy one that did not have a guitar player on it. The sound was awful! — Tom Verlaine
I think all record companies should be run by a musician. Just as you wouldn't trust your health to an electrician. — Paul Bley
The whole point is, give me a break with the standards. You go to the average jazz label and suggest a record and they want to know which standards you're going to play. I'm saying let's break the formula. — Branford Marsalis
My dream is to do whatever I want without any interference from the record company. — Sarah Vaughan
Many fail to realize this great recording industry was built by so-called jazz artists. And at the other end of the spectrum, a base in European classical music as well. — Ahmad Jamal
There's so much around, you don't know what to listen to. All I've got at home is Bo Diddley, some Stones and Beatles stuff, and old jazz records. — Syd Barrett
Jazz isn't like pop, where you sell millions of records with a hit. Your spirit and soul aren't important in pop music. But jazz is like classical music. If people like you, they'll remember you and you'll last forever. — Freddie Hubbard
People think it is all about country music, and I know a lot of country music has come out of there, but like Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dillon was recorded there. A lot of great records; R&B records, jazz records. It's a lot of great players and great studios. — Elvis Costello
I will never again play anything that does not have social significance. We American jazz musicians of African descent have proved beyond all doubt that we are master musicians of our instruments. Now what we have to do is employ our skill to tell the dramatic story of our people and what we've been through. — Max Roach
The music I like to play is Rock 'N Roll. I like to rock like a wild animal. I like to rock it well enough to whip a yak's ass. I love to rock it good on a horse's ass. I like to rock it real hard. I love to rock it all the way to Russia. I like to kick out the Jazz and kick it out all the way. — Wesley Willis
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
A chimpanzee could learn what I do physically, but it goes way beyond that. When you play, you play life. — Jaco Pastorius
I'm not a jazz artist. Don't get me wrong now, it's all music to me. I just played music and if it's likeable, someone liked the sound, then fine, but I'm not interested in being a jazz musician. I don't consider myself a jazz musician. I don't have anything to do with that word. — Pharoah Sanders
I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right. — Duke Ellington
I tell my students, 'It's an important tradition and you have to go back and hear this music and learn its language all the way through. How are you going to know what's new to play, if you haven't listened to everything that's old?' — Jackie McLean
I still play jazz, and I've always got that trumpet very handy, but I'm coming to feel the classical venues are where my main focus is, in the realm of symphonic pops. — Doc Severinsen
I've played with all of the heavyweights in the modern jazz, progressive jazz movement. I've been fortunate enough to play with them, a who's who. All of those guys, I've been fortunate enough to have performed with. — Sonny Rollins
I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast. — Paul Desmond
I've never heard anything Wynton [Marsalis] played sound like it meant anything at all. Wynton has no voice and no presence. His music sounds like a talented high-school trumpet player to me... he's jazzy the same way someone who drives a BMW is sporty. — Keith Jarrett
Dance music-as I keep saying, you can dance to a windshield wiper... a windshield wiper that's fairly steady gives you a beat and all you need is an out-of-tune playing 'Melancholy Baby' and you've got dance music. — Artie Shaw
And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it. — Wynton Marsalis
Once I could play what I heard inside me, that's when I was born. — Charlie Parker
I'm not supposed to be playing, the music is supposed to be playing me. I'm just supposed to be standing there with the horn, moving my fingers. The music is supposed to be coming through me; that's when it's really happening. — Sonny Rollins
You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads. — Miles Davis
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
Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they're trying to say with jazz. You don't need any prologues, you just play. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you. — Oscar Peterson
The thing is this: When I play, what I try to do is to reach my subconscious level. I don't want to overtly think about anything, because you can't think and play at the same time - believe me, I've tried it (laughs). — Sonny Rollins
Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one. — Duke Ellington
Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz. — Paul Desmond
Many people don't understand how disciplined you have to be to play jazz... And that is really the idea of democracy - freedom within the Constitution or discipline. You don't just get out there and do anything you want. — Dave Brubeck
To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music. — Nina Simone
The reward for playing jazz is playing jazz. — John Lewis
Jazz is about freedom within discipline. Usually a dictatorship like in Russia and Germany will prevent jazz from being played because it just seemed to represent freedom, democracy and the United States. — Dave Brubeck
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
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of playing jazz quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about playing jazz to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of playing jazz quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
