Bill Dixon Music Quotations

If you think about it, $100,000 in terms of a recording is not a lot of money. For musicians who are cranking out a lot of this uninteresting commercial music, it is not unusual for that amount of money to be allocated for the lunch commemorating the signing of one of their recording contracts.

I come from a generation where the dreams and aspirations of a whole lot of young men were sacrificed at the altar of getting some kind of menial job.

When Coltrane died, a void appeared in this music that has not been filled yet. He maintained a forward motion in his work and did not look back.

If, when making reference to a larger musical grouping, you say orchestra, you can readily expect that they will seek to correct you and let you know that it's really a big band. Continued insistence over the years has only served to make those people think you are being pedantic.

If musicians don't do any music, then there isn't any music. Musicians are very tricky and can be quite elusive.

The Canadians, by the paucity of invitations that have been extended to me to do things there, have obviously never been that enamored with my work.

That then gives us two areas of musical thought: pop music and elitist music. Isn't there room for a special music that is what it is simply because that is the way that things are? There is always going to be different forms of music. I do not think we should put down rap music and things like that. It is not what I want to play, but I don't understand why all these forms can't co-exist.

In certain areas of this music, especially since the 1960s - and that is no coincidence - certain people have been singled out for attention and the others have been totally ignored to the extent that the interested music public has been made to believe that they no longer exist.

I have hundreds of hours of this music on tape performed by orchestras at the college that, as I said, have never seen the light of any other day.

I did not make my first recording until I was 37... I did not even start to study music until I was 20... I entered music at a time when New York was this cauldron of incredible artistic and cultural activity.

The next Charlie Parker is out there somewhere. He is not in one of these schools. He is not getting any of these grants. This music desperately needs to be subsidized so that the people who are trying to do something and have no access can have access to something. I was on one of the National Endowment Panels some years ago and it was an eye-opener to actually witness the selection process in operation.

The idea of the nightclub as a supported and supportive venue for the creation of music is as outdated and outmoded as an idea as even thinking about it as a venue for the creation of the music. A nightclub is a place where you are supposed to have fun and drink and carry on.