Sam Rivers Quotations

My early influences I'd say were, well, just about all the old great masters like Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, naturally Charlie Parker and quite a few others that are still around like Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Illinois Jacquet and of course my great friend Dexter Gordon.

I'm a musicologist, and I know that this is very rare. As a matter of fact, it's unique in the history of jazz, this group that I'm performing with, this trio. No other trio does these kind of things. I mean, it's an experience you will only hear with this group. It's a one-time experience in life, if you don't come back and hear us again, which would be different anyway.

I have made that one of my policies never to play anything that I've already put on record.

Well I'm a third-generation musician. My Grandfather's a musician and my father and mother were both musicians and so I'm a musician. It was just natural that I should be a musician 'cause I was born into the family.

I don't want to bore myself, so I'm always writing new music. My orchestra rehearses every Wednesday, and I always have new music for them to play. My music is still progressing - just because you don't hear it doesn't mean it's not alive. The music is complicated, but it's about emotion. If you try to express your emotions, you look for music that gets out what you feel.

The great musicians are those who can reach people, who can make people feel something.