Keith Jarrett Quotations

Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there's no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.

I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.

One thing you learn: if you want to reveal yourself, you also have to know where to stop.

You know, when people look at a tree, they look at the leaves; they don't look at the spaces between the leaves. They're focused on the tree. I think there's an awareness of spaces or it wouldn't look like a tree to them.

Once we're inside a tune, we can do anything with it.

We accept so many things that come through the media; we get used to them, however vigilant we are. But for any creative art, you have to remain 110% conscious, and in a world that's losing consciousness, that's getting harder.

The way I think about the practicing, it is my undercover work.

I cannot say what I think is right about Music. I only know the rightness of it.

If a person plays dissonance long enough, it will sound like consonance. It's a language that was alien and then it's less and less alien as it continues to live.

I actually get a metallic taste in my mouth when I think about electric music.

We really never know what we're gonna play when we get on stage.

Musicians are always gigging and never have a chance to stop for a minute.

When you're on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn't exactly a sound - it's a hum, like the streets.

When you're up against an electric band like that, it's like you're on two separate planets.

If I'm not a jazz player all the time, I've at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.

If you already have a piece of music ingrained in your body, why would you not play it?

Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.

Your own music comes out of your head and emotions, but it's not etched in your system.

I realized that improvisers should probably always have time off. But musicians are always gigging and never have a chance to stop for a minute - unless something drastic occurs.

I'm not talking ideas, or even presentation. It's like in politics: You have to sell something to become an electric player - like your skin or your heart.

I can't even tolerate my own playing on electric keyboards. It's not about the musical ideas - the sound itself is toxic. It's like eating plastic broccoli.

I don't like recording studios - except my own, which is just a little room above the garage.

Silence is the potential from which music can arise.

When I joined the band I didn't know any of the tunes, and when I left the band I didn't know any of the tunes!

I think you have to be completely merciless with yourself.

Wynton Marsalis is jazzy the same way someone who drives a BMW is sporty.

I am a romantic, I admit it.

Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms.

I don't like recording studios - except my own, which is just a little room above the garage.

If sound is music and came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound. If the sound is effective, it should actually have a chemical - some sort of physiological - effect on the listener, so he doesn't have to hear that sound again.

It is the individual voice, present to itself, that needs to be heard. We need to hear the process of the musician working on himself. We don't need to hear who is more clever with synthesizers. Our cleverness has created the world we live in, which in many ways, we're sorry about.

I'm my own most merciless critic onstage.

I believe that a truly valuable artist must be an artist who realizes the impossibility of his task -and then continues to do it.

Creativity is what makes humanity move. We were created to participate.

... The 'cleverness' syndrome has taken the place of melody. It's like everyone has come down with this terrible disease in jazz....you are always expected to do your own material, which is a strange thing to do if you're a poor composer but a great player.

Ideally, I'd like to be the eternal novice, for then only the surprises would be endless.

If music is sound & came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound.

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.