Jazz Quotations | Page 5

We need it for our psyche. It's like group therapy. We've likened this to a jazz funeral, we mourn on the way there, and rejoice on the way back. We've got to start rejoicing!

We have a very committed, loyal audience that wants to be both entertained and challenged. They want to see the big-name jazz stars, but they also want to see what's new and different out there. They have this 'show me' attitude. They want guidance to new and creative things.

We were jazz musicians in the early days. But as soon as we brought in the DJ, the shows turned from people sitting down to dancing.

You know you're a hopeless record nerd when your time travel fantasies always come around to how cool it would be to go back to 1973 and buy all the great funk and jazz and salsa records that came out that year on tiny obscure labels and are now really rare and expensive.

We play what I call 'soul jazz,' ... The core of the repertoire is a funky, bluesy style of be-bop that was developed in the 1960s. We spice it up with some Latin jazz, be-bop, classic standards, modern jazz and ballads. We perform a variety of stuff.

This special event at Vibrato brought together many people sharing a common bond - a love of jazz and a desire to support its future, ... It gave them the opportunity to indulge in both passions - to celebrate the great artistry of Dave Brubeck, and to support the Brubeck Institute, a program at the University of the Pacific which, through its Fellowship Program and Summer Jazz Colony, serves to train and nurture the next generation of great jazz artists and innovators.

Poetry, like jazz, is one of those dazzling diamonds of creative industry that help human beings make sense out of the comedies and tragedies that contextualize our lives.

The chief trouble with jazz is that there is not enough of it; some of it we have to listen to twice.

If one takes all the styles in jazz harmonically from the earliest beginnings to the latest experiments, he still has a rather limited scope when compared to the rest of music in the world.

I wouldn't really say I'm a jazz guy, which I'm not.

I like rock music. I like jazz better, though.

Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.

I still play jazz, and I've always got that trumpet very handy, but I'm coming to feel the classical venues are where my main focus is, in the realm of symphonic pops.

Blues and jazz pulled me away from what was left of my family.

I was considered as a jazz man rather than as a blues player. There were no blues players-you played one sort of jazz of another sort of jazz.

I am viewed as the Negro who has gone outside of the categories assigned to me.

My work has been marginalized as far as the jazz-business complex is concerned, or the contemporary-music complex.

Is jazz a rhythm, or is it a vibration?

I listen to instrumental jazz and bluegrass, but aside from my AM workout, I have no rituals.

Most of the international acceptance of jazz education can be traced to the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, and the wonderful program they inaugurated.

Don't be a perfectionist... leave that to the classical musicians.

Jazz stands for freedom.

Jazz is about freedom within discipline.

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

[David] Bowie went on to make best-selling music - funk, dance music, electronic music, while also being influenced by cabaret and jazz.

[David] Bowie's last album "Blackstar" featured him backed by a jazz quartet.

We're trying to keep the jazz tradition alive.

There are a lot of jazz musicians, however, who do have to go to Europe and most of their work is in Europe. That's not true for me.

We like this kind of music. Jazz is strictly for stay-at-homes.

The program is Jazz and Contemporary Music and the studio is designed with that in mind, ... It stays very busy. It's an ant bed as soon as school starts.

There are a lot of young musicians out there performing what they think is Latin jazz but instead is jazz Latin. And there's a difference. Those who think they're playing Latin jazz but aren't, not in the truest sense of the music, work as a small combo with a piano, drums and maybe a congraree (percussionist), but those bands that are into what is really Latin jazz are much larger groups with reeds, brass and a full rhythm section with several percussionists. There will always be Latin jazz. My mission is to keep it alive.

We wanted to share creativity and didn't want to be bound by traditional jazz conventions.

We already knew that any soul and jazz band has to go through James Brown. He didn't impart any wisdom -- he mumbled a lot when we talked to him -- but we learned a lot from his performance.

To me, a jazz venue is what's playing there. I once saw something amazing at the Gilded Balloon during the Festival, which really stuck in my head. That's why I don't really see the Jam House as fitting in anywhere in particular in the Edinburgh jazz scene - the clubs all do different things.

The reason I wanted to do this is to keep this music alive, ... That's really important, that the young people really get to hear what jazz is from these masters that'll be there.

There didn't seem to be any musical boundaries around Vassar's creativity or abilities. He appeared to me to be right at home and just as articulate within a jazz ensemble as he was in his collaborations with the Blue Grass Album Band.

This weekend's concert is a great opportunity for people in the community to hear jazz for a lot less money.

This was a very challenging year, but I'm very proud of this lineup. A lot of other jazz festivals have gone under, but not only are we alive, there are a lot of folks around the country who would pay to see this lineup.

This was 1965, ?64, I was going to the conservatory there and later on, I became chairman of the New England Conservatory, which was a classical school with a jazz department.

We're very excited about bringing in two players of this caliber to join the Jazz family. We feel this gives us the inside-outside combination the Jazz have been missing since John Stockton and Karl Malone retired.

very honored and proud that jazz has brought me to this acclaim by the Canadian people.

This show will succeed in bringing jazz back to the public?s attention.

We have different genres that are complementary to jazz and close to the idiom. This is the 37th outdoor music festival I've organized and I think it's going to be spectacular.

Both men and women have masculine and feminine elements. We've just been concentrating on the masculine elements in jazz coming out for too long. It's time for feminine elements to emerge.

Boxing is such a great sport and so much like making jazz music, ... There is the footwork, the jab, the constant setting up and reacting to your opponent.

Everything has changed; my tone, my harmonics, my technique and control of my horn, ... It's all part of my evolution as a jazz musician, that combined with the fact I now perform regularly and practice two to three hours a day and more, when possible.

Every time I play a tune, it's different, ... It should be different because that's the essence of what jazz is. I've probably played that tune 200 times, and like everything, the piece evolves and changes and there's more depth to it.

Everything else, they can listen to over the radio and know how to do it. Jazz seems to be a little more complicated.

As the years went by and jazz got more popular and social conditions changed, you were able to have jazz as a topic introduced into the music curriculum in universities, ... I think that one thing that hip-hop and jazz have in common is that they are both coming out of the minority subculture and we've faced some of the same problems. They are attacked in different ways . . . but they are a minority in a majority culture, so they are unfortunately discriminated against by the larger portion of the majority community.

As the 1960s began, jazz music was still at an apex, with hard bop groups led by the likes of Miles Davis and John Coltrane remaining a force on the musical landscape.

At that time, 1970, not many white people had seen black gospel in its full glory. Gospel was not common at blues festivals or jazz festivals. So, you know, we got on kind of a mission there to bring gospel on down to the front of the bus, as we called it.

At some point there is a larger awareness of the music and culture of the minority, when it is picked up by the mainstream, just as it happened in jazz and blues with the Afro community here.

At Ronnie's, we had young kids who enjoyed it so much they came in every night. Something else - a lot of the old jazz diehards dug it, too.

At 3 A.M., I'm still up watching videos of jazz heroes I never saw live. It's so thrilling. And not just the music. The Internet is changing the future of fund-raising. I'm thrilled by the potential.

Even during the major avant-garde period of jazz in the late '60s and early '70s, the songs usually had melodies, some harmonic starting-off point, or something to unify a particular piece in the beginning.

Flea got into rock later on in life, came up in jazz as a jazz trumpet player, and then got into punk rock, playing in Fear and stuff like that.

The tour was just Ray Brown. We were booked, in the course of this tour, at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Holland to play as a duo.

I started on timbales. I had a friend who had a little Latin jazz band. His father made the timbales for us, so I learned to play on them.

I started as a musician. I play the saxophone, but from the age of 17, I realised that it's very hard to make a living as a jazz musician in Australia. So I went for an audition and got an acting job and, fortunately, I completely fell in love with that.

I've been to this jazz festival more than any other. This is my favorite, I'd have to say. I have a lot of good friends that I've made over the past 25 years.

The whole thing comes from Provenza and I talking about be-bop jazz about five years ago when I got obsessed with it, and still am,

I've worked too long and too hard to play in some little joint for $65 a night, ... In New York, jazz fans support you. In Atlanta, unless you're booked in a club where folks can drive up to the front door, you're out of luck. If people have to look for parking, forget it.

These may be the most structured arrangements we?ve ever worked with. A lot of jazz is in combos and we sort of jam our way through. But this stuff, for the most part everything is notated.

The show was fantastic and was everything I could have expected from a live jazz concert.

The thing with Jazz is that it's kind of like a risk takers kind of music.

I've made rock records, classical records, jazz records, dub records. It always surprises me that people's own listening taste ranges from pop to hip-hop to jazz to rock, but if you're a musician who's been successful in one style, people won't let you have broader musical interests. It's ridiculous, really.

Same, just the same. Nine pieces ---- a trumpet, two trombones, reed, congas, drums, piano and vocalist. That's what a Latin jazz orchestra should be.

Ragtime has about the same amount of respect as comics. And in a way they're similar art forms. Ragtime is highly compositional, and the emotion in the music is built in, whereas in jazz a lot of that emotion comes from the way it's performed.

R&B music became gigantic with people like Marvin Gaye and Barry White and Curtis Mayfield who became superstars. We tried to find a place where Jazz belonged because we didn't sell records.

People who don't do jazz think it's black magic. But really, it's just a matter of getting used to it. It's fun to gamble. The trick is not to fall back on the things you've done before.

Other people have done jazz with Jewish themes, and other people have done Jewish scales and modes using materials that characterize the sound of Jewish music. I don't think many people have used the liturgy with a jazz band.

People say we're a jazz group. But there's no way I would ever call myself a jazz drummer. The only thing that's jazz about us is keeping the need to move forward and evolve.

People are willing to look for difference and pay more when they find it. Jazz it up and offer something different and people will pay for it.

A full-fledged Jazz Fest will generate an average of $200 million for the state of Louisiana and the city.

After last game, we needed to get Jazz more into our offense today. She was 12-for-12 from the floor last game and this one she only took seven shots. But our entire offense couldn't do anything against Rutgers. They shut us down.

The most important thing about Jazz at Lincoln Center is the fact that it's the first time that perhaps the most important art form in American culture has a place to really exhibit itself and dedicated to its own particular conditions of performance.

Strangely enough, in movie writing I've been more influenced by big bands than by any other film composer. The big bands of the 'forties and then the carry-over into the modern jazz field - Basie, Ellington, all the way up to Mulligan - these are my influences rather than, say, Franz Waxman or Tiomkin or anyone like that. I don't think in their terms.

So the ideas is not to shut out jazz - but it is very inclusive, which is great - because jazz is also an inclusive music.

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

Another thing that I noticed is a lot of people in the hip hop scene have a great respect for jazz and have incorporated by sampling some elements that come from jazz.

As late as the early '50s, jazz was still, for the most part, a genuinely popular music, a utilitarian, song-based idiom to which ordinary people could dance if they felt like it.

You may not be able to hire Al Green, but local high schools and colleges might have a jazz band or a choir you can afford.

The well-deserved attention that Scott has enjoyed in the 1990s and 2000s has come not only from the jazz community, but from pop fans as well. I have met numerous rock and R&B musicians who aren't heavily into jazz but absolutely adore Jimmy Scott.

The whole creation of jazz is sort of leading toward the ultimate. I'm not trying to be self-aggrandizing here, but I think that the jazz soloist is the pinnacle of what jazz is about.

This is an end of summer musical celebration that draws people from all over the globe to experience Detroit music, jazz in particular. We're evolving, that's all. We aren't morphing in to a different festival, just changing the construct a little bit. We're retaining the historical element and adding some things. Blues, funk, soul, gospel -- these are not strangers to Detroit or to folks who enjoy jazz, including me. We need to reach out to a younger audience, and we're attempting to do that.

They said, 'Why don't you make a hit record?' I said, 'It's not a big deal.' Because jazz musicians, there was a syndrome there. And the first record I had out was (Lesley Gore's) 'It's My Party.' I was trying to get her to change her name and I had to go to Tokyo for three weeks. I said, 'We'll fix it when I get back.' So, as soon as I got back it was No. 1. We did it, man. We had 19 hits in four years. Unbelievable.

Although my parents were playing jazz for me when I was a kid, I didn't pay much attention until I saw someone my age improvising, playing jazz..

Also, ... Grappelli didn't start playing jazz until he was an adult, so you hear how he molded (his influences) into the jazz setting.

They gave you a string instrument - I got a violin. Gave it to me. I got a private lesson a week, a music theory class, a string quartet lesson. Then we all got together for the orchestra. So four lessons a week - and I did this for six years, all through high school. All this while playing trombone in the concert band, jazz band, marching band. And singing in the a cappella chorus and drama club. And on the side, I was in two rock bands, hack garage bands.

There was extensive damage to the grandstand and the stable areas. And as it turns out, the Jazz Fest uses just about every square inch of those areas.

There will be a Jazz Fest in 2006. It will be in Louisiana. It will be as close to New Orleans as we can get it,

There will be a Jazz Fest in 2006. It will be as close to New Orleans as we can get it.

There were a lot of R&B groups that were my heroes, but the funny thing about my career and the way it went and where it went, at first I didn't really want to do pop music. I was a little bit more into jazz and R&B.

There really are two different ways of approaching music. There's the real pop way where it's like here's the song and here's your part and you play the same part every time. Then there's the jazz concept or approach where it's like well, here's a tune, here's the basic chord structure and melody, and you find your own part by listening to what other people are doing.

They're a physical team. They don't do a lot of jazz and all that stuff. They run the ball right at you, just sort of say, 'Come and get it.' We like that, because that's our type of style. I'm looking forward to this game. It gives us a chance to see where some guys are mentally and physically as far as toughness.

They're not carpenters. There's not a lot of need for jazz trombone players in Shreveport, La.

There's certainly jazz there, but you've got Bruce Springsteen and Jimmy Buffett and everything else there.

There is the understanding of the music and culture of the area. The band has studied the idea of the jazz funeral procession and how New Orleans residents use that as a time of mourning and a celebration of life.

There's an awful lot of hidden talent in the area. I've been here a number of years, and I've actually seen the number of venues diminish. We need more opportunities for jazz musicians.