Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Risk is at the heart of jazz. Every note we play is a risk. "

Related Quotes:

" The soprano has all those other instruments in it. It's got the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet, and tenor elements and can even approach the baritone in intensity. "

" I was spoiled by Monk's music because it was so good, so complete. "

" I wanted to be a pianist but it just wasn't my thing. I guess I wanted to stand up rather than sit down. "

" I still love the whole history of jazz. The old things sound better than ever. "

" Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention. "

" People don't want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately, and this is one of the biggest problems in the world. "

" There is an awful lot of what I call recreational jazz going on, where people go out and learn a particular language or style and become real sharks on somebody else's language. "

" The soprano turned out to sound to me like the right hand on the piano. "

" We played for peanuts. But we did what we wanted to do, we heard what we wanted to hear, we performed what we wanted to perform, we learned what we wanted to learn. "

" Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it. "

" When I heard Monk in person in 1955, he was playing with a quartet in a small club. The place was full of musicians, but there was no public at all. "

" I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone. "

" If you're trying to invent something new, you're going to reach a lot of discouraging points, and most people give up. "

" Nobody was playing the soprano saxophone and certainly nobody was trying to do anything with it. So I was all alone. I didn't know that at first. "

" Kenny G, I have to be grateful to him for proving that the instrument can be played all different kinds of ways. "

" When I first started playing music in 1955, there was just a small body of people that knew it. It was a very esoteric type of thing. "

" The saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I'm more interested in music. "

" I've performed solo for 20 years now, but I don't do much of it, because if you only play alone, you go crazy and out of tune and play foolish music. "

" Before the work comes to you, you have to invent work. "

" It's very important to go through periods where you sound just rotten and you know it, and you have to persevere or give up. "

" When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly. "

" If you have music you want to play that no one asks you to play, you have to go out and find where you can play it. It's called do or die. "

" I've always been extremely lucky in playing with great people who knew much more than I did. That's how I got from there to here. "

" What I learned with Cecil Taylor was strategy and survival and how to resist temptations and resist getting discouraged. "

" It starts with a single sound. If there's something in that sound, then it's worth continuing. "

" I think it is in collaboration that the nature of art is revealed. "

" To me, there is spirit in a reed. It's a living thing, a weed, really, and it does contain spirit of a sort. It's really an ancient vibration. "

" I fell in love with jazz when I was 12 years old from listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of jazz in New York on the radio. "

" When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now. "

" Bamboo is not a weed, it's a flowering plant. Bamboo is a magnificent plant. "