Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Man, I just feel so fortunate to be a jazz musician at all. I have a hard time thinking of it any other way. It's such a fulfilling vocation. I love it. "

Related Quotes:

" You don't just let a guy drop off the earth and not come together with everybody who knew him and loved him and respected him. You try to do it the right way. "

" I try to sleep as much as I can. I drink a lot of water. I practice consistently and just try to be ready for the gig. "

" The musicians in Chicago gave me my vocation, but New York calls to a jazz musician, for sure. You want to test your mettle. "

" It's easy to get tired of religious fundamentalists. They're such a bore. They have no sense of mystery. It's a drag, man. "

" Part of my joy as a singer is to give gifts to people, and one way I try to connect to them is to add something in French or German or whatever. "

" It's a beautiful thing to have time in the world, as a singer and as a musician, to make friends with people of the musical caliber of a Tommy Smith, an Arturo Sandoval, a Richard Galliano, a Till Broenner. "

" At a certain point, the graduate school thing didn't work out, and that meant I was liberated. "

Graduate School

" Romance is one of the things that most countries share, and I've noticed how different communities have their own ways of singing about love and heartbreak. "

" I travel all the time. And as I go around the world, I try to learn a little something and not just take up all the available air. "

" Salacious? I suppose every once in a while the salacious thing is not a bad thing. It's kind of monochromatic if that's all you do. "

" You don't know what bravery is until you overcome fear. "

" In New York, the drummers rush for a reason - because there's so much energy crackling through everything in that city and so many collisions at a highly accelerated rate. "

" I've tried to educate myself in the world and what's beautiful and what has meaning and is lasting. Then I just follow my intuition and see how it fits. "

" Of course we all know when music's too much in the head, and we define our greatest players by the way they are able to communicate directly from their emotional selves. "

" Audiences have taught me how to sing better and entertain better. "

" There is an actor's responsibility in presenting the emotional content of the lyrics to an audience. But whether you do that in a straightforward fashion or an ironic fashion or a blase fashion is all about opportunities, and singers are missing opportunities as artists if they don't pay attention to the lyric. "

" When improvisation is properly applied, it is compositional thinking, sped way up. "

" I haven't been afraid of John Coltrane or Miles Davis or Bill Evans or Wayne Shorter or Herbie Hancock. Why would I be afraid of the Beatles? "

" I hope to be at the top of my game when I'm 65 or 70. I don't want to reach my peak at 29. Not that I'm holding back anything, but there's a bunch of junk I don't know. "

" If I was going to sell out, I would do it for more than 10,000 records. "

" If you start to dwell on your pain, the amount of pain will increase. "

" You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies. "

" The singer is always an ambassador of music. "

" You learn as much as you can from the people that you work with. That's why you want to surround yourself with the heaviest people that you can possibly get to. "

Surround Yourself

" My intellect was quickened at divinity school, and my abilities to discern were strengthened, and that's always valuable. "

" I've worked with a number of big bands, but there's nothing in life like the Basie band. "

" I really thought I was gonna have a straight gig. But these jazz musicians put their arms around me time and again and said, 'Hey, young fella, you're one of us. Come with us.' That's a big deal when you're young and looking for your way in the world. "

" I'm a guy who has more slapstick than Joe Cool moments in his day, so I'm not taking myself so seriously. "

" I didn't arrive on the scene until after Jaco Pastorius had passed, but 'Three Views of a Secret' is a long-time favourite of mine. "

" The great jazz and jazz-influenced singers carry themselves with a certain panache and a certain elegance and, for lack of a better word, self-confidence. "

Self-Confidence