Jazz Quotes

I listened to the radio, so I was influenced by everyone from Michael Jackson to Milli Vanilli. But thankfully my dad had a collection of Cat Stevens albums while my mom was listening to jazz.

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.

That's the thing about jazz: it's free flowing, it comes from your soul.

If you met my dad, I think a lot of things would be put to rest. Because my pops is a pretty silly guy. But, Coldcut, they're based in the U.K. I'm a big fan of jazz music, so American music has had a big influence on what I listen to.

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.

Jazz is about being in the moment.

I was serious about ballet for a long time, but my mom got me into tap and jazz and modern and hip-hop, and I was one of those over-lessoned children.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

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.

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

I played Big Band jazz music. I wasn't into rock and roll. I was just there because it was a living. I surprised everyone. I'm still surprising people.

There's a richness to the old works if you look before the 1950s. The chord progressions and the language was more complicated, especially in the jazz and classical world.

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.

I listen to jazz mainly. Mainstream jazz.

Once you start collecting records you learn more and more about jazz and blues.

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts.

I think what we need is a more welcoming mode from the people who put on a hundred million country-western shows on television. How about a monthly jazz show?

I usually listen to surf music, not much instrumental music, and when I was younger I listened to jazz.

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.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

I used to be a jazz snob, believe it or not. I sort of turned my nose up at anything more commercial.

Free form jazz means absolutely nothing to me. Because there are no boundaries.

So I went into jazz and performed in jazz clubs all over the country.

I was pretty much prepared because I was already playing in extremely good ways when I arrived from Europe because I played jazz four or five years before I arrived here.

As a kid, I used to go see all the jazz players, Oscar Peterson, Stan Kenton, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespe.

Lately I've been listening to some classical music again, some jazz.

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.

As a matter of fact, we put it down because we wanted to be jazz pickers.

I have a secret love of jazz.

I've often cringed when I heard myself described as a jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a jazz vocalist.