Jazz Piano Quotes

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right. ~ Duke Ellington

Oliver came up to me and asked me to play something on the piano.

'What would you like?' I asked.

'Anything.'

This would be my thanks for the most beautiful evening of my life. I took a sip from my second martini, feeling as decadent as one of those jazz piano players who smoke a lot and drink a lot and are found dead in a gutter at the end of every film. ~ Andre Aciman

I'm a pianist - I studied jazz piano in college. ~ Cory Michael Smith

When I was eighteen or twenty, I knew everything except what I wanted. I knew all about people, and poetry, and love, and music, and politics, and baseball, and history, and I played pretty good jazz piano. And then I went traveling, because I felt that I might have missed something and it would be a good idea to learn it before I got my master's degree. (...) And the older I grew, and the farther I traveled, the younger I grew and the less I knew. I could feel it happening to me. I could actually walk down a dirty street and feel all my wisdom slipping away from me, all the things I wrote term papers about. ~ Peter S. Beagle

On the subject of Egypt, Ellen Cherry was so vague she thought Ramses II was a jazz piano player. From that, we might conclude that she was equally dumb about jazz. ~ Tom Robbins

Well, there's another set forward, you see. Up to now you couldn't stand all this dance and jazz music. It was too superficial and frivolous for you. Now you have seen that there's no need to take it seriously and that it can all the same be very agreeable and delightful. And by the way, the whole orchestra would be nothing without Pablo. He conducts it and puts fire into it. ~ Hermann Hesse

My first example concerns Satan's efforts to corrupt a person who has an unusual commitment to one particular doctrine or commandment of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This could be an unusual talent for family history work, an extraordinary commitment to constitutional government, a special gift in the acquisition of knowledge, or any other special talent or commitment.

In a memorable message given at the 1971 October conference, Elder Boyd K. Packer likened the fulness of the gospel to a piano keyboard. He reminded us that a person could be "attracted by a single key," such as a doctrine they want to hear "played over and over again." He explained:

Some members of the Church who should know better pick out a hobby key or two and tap them incessantly, to the irritation of those around them. They can dull their own spiritual sensitivities. They lose track that there is a fulness of the gospel, . . . [which they reject] in preference to a favorite note. This becomes exaggerated and distorted, leading them away into apostasy. [Boyd K. Packer, Teach Ye Diligently (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1975), p. 44]

We could say of such persons, as the Lord said of the members of the Shaker sect in a revelation given in 1831, "Behold, I say unto you, that they desire to know the truth in part, but not all" (D&C 49:2). And so, I say, beware of a hobby key. If you tap one key to the exclusion or serious detriment of the full harmony of the gospel keyboard, S ~ Dallin H. Oaks

I've heard some people say that I'm selling out, but I'm not. If I hadn't done 'Black Radio', and just kept on doing just piano trio stuff, I wouldn't be honest with myself; I'd be doing it to please other people. That would be selling out. ~ Robert Glasper

In general, we like to play as a band - guitar, piano, and voice. We also tour with a bass player, a drummer, and somebody who plays keyboard and guitar. We try to play all of our parts and flesh it out to get a lush sound, while also keeping the energy of a three-piece punk act. We want to be the best of all possible worlds. ~ Andrew Dost

If I had four fingers growing out of my forehead, I wouldn't try to play the piano with my nose. ~ Jarod Kintz

I have owned and played a Steinway all my life. It's the best Beethoven piano. The best Chopin piano. And the best Ray Charles piano. I like it, too. ~ Randy Newman

It's like I'll sit down and put my hands on the piano or the guitar, and then I'll hear a sound or I'll feel a chord that will resonate and then I'll get something happening in my voice. My voice is like a car that I get into and drive but I don't know where I'm going. And I record everything. And often, I sort of get into a state, a creative state that is, where I'm just feeling around melodically, and playing things off the top of my head. Then I go back and listen to it and for the first time, hear what I just did. It's like Elvis has left the building while the thing is happening. ~ Beth Nielsen Chapman

I also went to art school and learned to play a piano there, but I play by ear. ~ John Mayall

I learned to play piano on my own and my parents thought "Oh it would be a good thing for you take piano lessons. That's the way you really need to learn to play the piano." ~ Colin Munroe

My years of ballet and jazz dance lessons didn't make me any more graceful - they just helped keep me from bumping into the furniture on stage. ~ Toni Tennille

At 14 and 15, I used to listen to Tito Puente, Dave Valentine and everything that was happening with American jazz. I love it. ~ La India

Piano is very elegant. I also think it's a very truthful instrument. ~ Howard Shore

I am enthusiastic over humanity's extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday's fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

All them weird chords which don't mean a thing ... you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance to ~ Louis Armstrong

Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts. ~ Bill Gates

Japan

Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It's the one about the one-ton
temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it into the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed. ~ Billy Collins

Some writing is a really nice solitary process, in a way, because you can be a little self-conscious around other people. If it's just you, and you're at your favorite piano, or whatever instrument, and you feel comfortable, then somehow, I always feel like it's opening a door and letting whatever is to pass through pass. ~ Marketa Irglova

I have graded my separate works from A to D. The grades I hand out to myself do not place me in literary history. I am comparing myself with myself. Thus can I give myself an A-plus for Cat's Cradle, while knowing that there was a writer named William Shakespeare. The report card is chronological, so you can plot my rise and fall on graph paper, if you like:
Player Piano B
The Sirens of Titan A
Mother Night A
Cat's Cradle A-plus
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater A
Slaughterhouse-Five A-plus
Welcome to the Monkey House B-minus
Happy Birthday, Wanda June D
Breakfast of Champions C
Wampeters, Foma & Grandfalloons C
Slapstick D
Jailbird A
Palm Sunday C ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Then I started listenin' a lot to classical composers. Piano works. Just to see what they were doin'. That sort of put me in a different groove to try to blend all that in. ~ Mose Allison

The hippest thing you can do is not play at all. Just listen. ~ Lennie Tristano

Last year, I finally got my own grand piano, and that was a big thing for me because it's always been and always will be a very important part of my life. ~ David Hyde Pierce

I like the poem on the page and not at the podium. I like to address the poem in peace and quiet, not on the edge of a folding chair with a full bladder. I can't stand hearing a poem that I can't see. I did a reading at Wayne State, and it ended with the comedy such occasions deserve. I'd seated myself on a piano bench, and discovered upon attempting to arise at the end that the varnish had softened and I was stuck fast. The hinge was to the front, under my knees, so that as I tried to get up, I merely opened the lid. ~ Ted Kooser

Ability to think, like the violin or piano, requires daily practice ~ Charlie Chaplin

I started playing trumpet when I was 11 years old. All I wanted to be was a jazz trumpet player when I grew up. ~ Flea

Some acts are tricky. Eartha Kitt was tricky in a wonderful, old-style way. She did yoga on the piano and put her hands over her ears when the other acts were on. ~ Jools Holland

Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul. ~ Wassilly Kandinsky

She clicked open the door and glided into the back seat like a summer breeze through an open window on the highway. "Where are you heading?", His Southern twang reminded her of home, but her eyes showed him no familiarity. She stared at him, void of expression, her thoughts racing. "Miss?", he persisted. "Anywhere. Please. Just drive.", she replied tersely, not sure if she even wanted her mind to join her in the back seat. The driver stared into her eyes and somehow understood, he started the engine and on they went. Two strangers, a blur of yellow, in pursuit of nowhere. ~ R.J. Arkhipov

Music is the harmonious voice of creation; an echo of the invisible world. ~ Giuseppe Mazzini

I just fell in love with the integrity of the music & that was it. ~ Tierney Sutton

Jazz presumes that it would be nice if the four of us--simpatico dudes that we are--while playing this complicated song together, might somehow be free and autonomous as well. Tragically, this never quite works out. At best, we can only be free one or two at a time--while the other dudes hold onto the wire. Which is not to say that no one has tried to dispense with wires. Many have, and sometimes it works--but it doesn't feel like jazz when it does. The music simply drifts away into the stratosphere of formal dialectic, beyond our social concerns.

Rock-and-roll, on the other hand, presumes that the four of us--as damaged and anti-social as we are--might possibly get it to-fucking-gether, man, and play this simple song. And play it right, okay? Just this once, in tune and on the beat. But we can't. The song's too simple, and we're too complicated and too excited. We try like hell, but the guitars distort, the intonation bends, and the beat just moves, imperceptibly, against our formal expectations, whetehr we want it to or not. Just because we're breathing, man. Thus, in the process of trying to play this very simple song together, we create this hurricane of noise, this infinitely complicated, fractal filigree of delicate distinctions.

And you can thank the wanking eighties, if you wish, and digital sequencers, too, for proving to everyone that technologically "perfect" rock--like "free" jazz--sucks rockets. Because order sucks. I mean, look at the Stone ~ Dave Hickey

I think Christian spirituality is like jazz music. I think loving Jesus is something you feel. I think it is something very difficult to get on paper. But it is no less real, no less meaningful, no less beautiful. ~ Donald Miller

Downtown, a dress for Meg- I do it every time I kill a man. ~ James Ellroy

Schoolwork came easy to me. I learned to play piano effortlessly. I was coasting. ~ Trent Reznor

The blues and jazz will live forever ... So will the Delta and the Big Easy. ~ Jack Nicholson

Just because I'm playing Jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through Jazz. ~ Charles Mingus

How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers. ~ Gioachino Rossini

In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That's a little bit too much. ~ Miles Davis

falafel joint, jazz joint, gyro joint, corner. Schoolyard, creperie, realtor, corner. Tenement, tenement, tenement museum, corner. Pink Pony, Blind Tiger, muffin boutique, corner. Sex shop, tea shop, synagogue, corner. Bollywood, Buddha, botanica, corner. Leather outlet, leather outlet, leather outlet, corner. Bar, school, bar, school. People's Park, corner. Tyson mural, Celia Cruz mural, Ladi Di mural, corner. Bling shop, barbershop, car service corner. ~ Richard Price

Let your life be your music and let your music be your life. ~ Kevin Eubanks

You'll float down here with your friends, Beverly, we all float down here, tell Bill that Georgie says hello, tell Bill that Georgie misses him but he'll see him soon, tell him Georgie will be in the closet some night with a piece of piano wire to stick in his eye, tell him - ~ Stephen King

There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places. ~ Miles Davis

Every day a piano doesn't fall on my head is good luck. ~ Meg Rosoff

Jazz of the sort we play is a happy, extroverted music. You don't have to think about it too much. ~ Chris Barber

I like things matching. I have an upright bass, a drum kit and a grand piano that's the same color. I tend to overthink things. ~ Penn Jillette