Jazz Quotes

I took several years of dance lessons that included ballet, tap and jazz. They helped a great deal with body control, balance, a sense of rhythm, and timing.

I progressed through so many different styles of music through my teen years, both as a player and a vocalist, particularly the jazz and pop of the early 20th Century.

In 1994, I started touring again and I recorded two albums for Chesky Jazz.

You know, Equal Interest played at the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival Awards and not one musician from that category was even thought of. Even thought of! The idea, that here's this vital energy, and that element doesn't even know it exists!

My music isn't anything but me. It has jazz in it, and rock'n'roll, and it has an urgency to it.

I've been invited to do a trio with a fantastic jazz guitarist and a harmonica player.

The economic picture in the States today doesn't allow for jazz concerts in a tour fashion. People now are too used to the Festival, which gives them more names for the same price.

It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself.

Growing up, I was very much interested in jazz music.

We didn't go for music that sounded like blues, or jazz, or rock, or Led Zeppelin, or Rolling Stones. We didn't want to be like any of the other bands.

I think that people should learn about that. In most music, there's one way that you do something, and that's the only way. In jazz, it's a lot different.

I love that pre-mod jazz look of the late Fifties, the Steve McQueen style that influenced the British modernists.

Film in the 20th century, it's the American art form, like jazz.

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.

I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It's not like I'm cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do.

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.

For me writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz.

I don't limit my taste. There's some jazz that I like and there's some opera. I've been listening to what was essentially country music, but it crossed over to rock.

Well, Grover Washington was my main influence and when I went to college, I started listening to more of the jazz masters like Sonny Rollins, Cannonball Adderley, and John Coltrane.

Blues and soul and jazz music has so much pain, so much beauty of raw emotion and passion.

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.

I was blessed to work with The Jazz Messengers when the two piano players were Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea.

You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That's jazz.

Jazz vision for me is seeing my art in musical term. It offers me an visual expressions in an ever-changing musical palette.

I like to say, jazz music is kind of like my musical equivalent of comfort food. You know, it's always where I go back to when I just want to feel sort of grounded.

My mother was a jazz fanatic and she wanted me to play the piano so I could play jazz tunes. I wish I had learned but I was too busy getting into trouble!

My early influences were the Shadows, who were an English instrumental band. They basically got me into playing and later on I got into blues and jazz players. I liked Clapton when he was with John Mayall. I really liked that period.

To most jazz critics I was basically Kenny G.

Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.

Jazz was more of a tool for me to use to enhance my musicality.