Nagasaka Jazz Quotes

Jazz is more than music, it's a state of mind. Hot, cool or in between; we take those outward expressions and transpose them into our inner-most thoughts. We let our instruments do our bidding. ~ J.A. Rollins

I listen to jazz mainly. Mainstream jazz. ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality. ~ Mose Allison

What I can't understand why Blacks can't achieve royal status when it comes to forms that they have largely created? I mean there's a White King of Rock n' Roll, there's a White King of Jazz, how come we can never achieve titles of royalty in these fields we are supposed to prevail in? They held a so called Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the other night, where White judges credit people who resemble them with the invention of Rock and Roll. I didn't even see Blacks in the audience. ~ Ishmael Reed

I had to figure out how to survive in New York, and most of my time was occupied in getting an apartment and getting money. A lot of older jazz guys looked out for me and found me gigs and places to stay. ~ Wynton Marsalis

I made the wrong mistakes ~ Thelonious Monk

Whenever you need to win a situation - talk about jazz, Johanna. It confuses people. ~ Caitlin Moran

Jazz exemplifies artistic activity that is at once individual and communal, performance that is both repetitive and innovative, each participant sometimes providing background support and sometimes flying free. ~ Mary Catherine Bateson

I think the key that differentiates the good actors from the mediocre ones that are still trying to come up, is that the good ones know how to listen. It's like being in a jazz band. They know how to listen to what the other musicians are playing. And where to come in and where to sit out. That's my approach to being in an ensemble cast and working with any kind of actors in a scene. ~ Wesley Snipes

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. ~ Don Ellis

New York is the dream world, the center of jazz and rock. ~ Gyorgy Ligeti

To say that the Afro American created jazz doesn't mean anything bad about Anglo Americans, and I always teach my younger jazz musicians that at this point the entirety of the American tradition is your heritage, and you need to know it. ~ Wynton Marsalis

Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order. I felt I learned from him in every way
through the senses, theoretically, technically. I would talk to Monk about musical problems, and he would sit at the piano and show me the answers just by playing them. I could watch him play and find out the things I wanted to know. Also, I could see a lot of things that I didn't know about at all. ~ John Coltrane

I had my jazz club and I had enough money. So I didn't have to write for my living. ~ Haruki Murakami

I'm an advocate of music in schools. It's important to me that music is in as many schools as possible across this country and across the world. I think that it's a lost art form because kids aren't as exposed to it as maybe they used to be, or should be. I was exposed heavily to jazz and that's why I love it. ~ Chrisette Michele

He didn't say nothing. He would just do things. He never said nothing or explained nothing. He just would do it and that was it. You were on your own. You had to be very independent being around John [Coltrane]. ~ Pharoah Sanders

Just because you're not a drummer doesn't mean you don't have to keep time. ~ Thelonious Monk

Streets paved with opal sadness,
Lead me counterclockwise, to pockets of joy,
And jazz. ~ Bob Kaufman

Jazz closed his eyes. ~ Barry Lyga

I'm really not this jazz traditionalist guy you've been making me out to be all of these years. ~ Christian McBride

I'd love to see a Nirvana biopic. I loved them when I was younger. I really like jazz music, so I'd like to see a Billie Holiday biopic - she was a fascinating woman. ~ Antonia Thomas

I'm always looking to create new avenues or new visions of music. ~ Herbie Hancock

My nerves did a jitter dance, stuck between two wolves. ~ Jazz Feylynn

Jazz will be the classical music of the future. ~ Dizzy Gillespie

I think that virtuosity is the first sign of morality in a musician. It means you're serious enough to practice. ~ Wynton Marsalis

This development signified also that jazz would someday have to contend with the idea of its being an art (since that was the white man's only way into it). The emergence of the white player meant that Afro-American culture had already become the expression of a particular kind of American experience, and what is most important, that this experience was available intellectually, that it could be learned. ~ Amiri Baraka

The greatest contribution jazz has made in music has been to replace the role of the conductor with a member of the ensemble who, instead of waving his arms to keep time and convey mood, is an active member of the musical statement. That person is the drummer. ~ Elvin Jones

Jazz is the folk music of the machine age. ~ Paul Whiteman

Intimate singing had a wonderful style in the '30s and '40s. It came out of Broadway and the jazz of Louis Armstrong and Billie Holliday. But Sinatra created the best romantic era that we've ever had. ~ Tony Bennett

Jazz to me is a living music. ~ Dexter Gordon

I love music, I love all kinds of music, particularly jazz. Jazz is an extension of America. There's no other country in the world that could have produced jazz. ~ Jon Huntsman, Jr.

I was blessed to work with The Jazz Messengers when the two piano players were Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea. ~ Chuck Mangione

A portrait of the young Charlie Parker with a degree of vivid detail never before approached ... [Kansas City Lightning is] a deft, virtuosic panorama of early jazz ... This is a mind-opening, and mind-filling, book. ~ Tom Piazza

Dizzy Gillespie, the jazz trumpet player, once said, "It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play." He was one of my special ones. And he was quite correct. Silence enhances music. What you do not play can sweeten what you do. But ~ Mitch Albom

I've always written poetry but I didn't realise it was a therapy for me until I was maybe 15. That's when my singing started to come together as well because I was listening to so much jazz. What I love I will always embrace. ~ Amy Winehouse

If you don't know what to play, play nothing. ~ Miles Davis

A jazz musician is a combination orator, dialectician, mathematician, athlete, entertainer, poet, singer, dancer, diplomat, educator, student, comedian, artist, seducer, public masturbator, and general all-round good fellow. ~ Steve Lacy

Jazz, like left-wing politics and 'the common man', was a cause. ~ Martin T. Williams

Jazz was formerly a crude term for indulging in an action which in polite society is referred to, if at all, only with such vague Latin terms as intercourse and cohabitation. ~ Charlton Laird

Sam could feel his jaw drop open, but it took him a moment to gather himself together enough to shut it. He blinked at Jazz. "Did that cat just talk, or am I losing my mind?"
Koshka laughed, a bizarre sound coming from something with whiskers and ear tufts. "So you believe in witches but not to talking cats? You have a very limited worldview, Human. You might want to work on that. ~ Deborah Blake

Jazz is improvisation and syncopation, with resilience and flow, with earthy elegance, nuance and subtlety, with the integrity of individual expression within (usually) a group context, with true democracy in action. ~ Greg Thomas

I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice. ~ Boz Scaggs