Playing Jazz Quotes

The radio is playing jazz, and I listen to the sound of the trumpet playing a solo until I become that sound. ~ Joy Harjo

Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there's a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music. ~ Toots Thielemans

I started playing jazz by slowing down Tal Farlow records and analyzing his runs ~ Lenny Breau

To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music. ~ Nina Simone

When we strike a balance between the challenge of an activity and our skill at performing it, when the rhythm of the work itself feels in sync with our pulse, when we know that what we're doing matters, we can get totally absorbed in our task. That is happiness.

The life coach Martha Beck asks new potential clients, "Is there anything you do regularly that makes you forget what time it is?"

That forgetting -- that pure absorption -- is what the psychologist Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi calls "flow" or optimal experience. In an interview with Wired magazine, he described flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."

In a typical day that teeters between anxiety and boredom, flow experiences are those flashes of intense living -- bright against the dull. These optimal experiences can happen when we're engaged in work paid and unpaid, in sports, in music, in art.

The researchers Maria Allison and Margaret Duncan have studied the role of flow in women's lives and looked at factors that contributed to what they call "antiflow." Antiflow was associated with repetitive household tasks, repetitive tasks at work, unchallenging tasks, and work we see as meaningless. But there's an element of chaos when it comes to flow. Even ~ Ariel Gore

I have a theory that musicians recognize each other and if they are destined to collaborate together they will. Mainly, they recognize each other according to the class they belong to. If they are punk-rocker kids from the neighborhood, they are going form a band. If they happen to be musicians that are going to play in pubs and restaurants, they are going to recognize each other, form a band and play together. If it's about musicians that are playing jazz and are going to jazz festivals, for e.g., then they are going to meet and work together. ~ Vlatko Stefanovski

If you're making money people don't think you're playing Jazz. When you're not making money they think you're a great Jazz musician. ~ Pete Fountain

Growing up playing jazz and improvising has had a big impact on me, and it translates into my music. ~ Stephen Bruner

Lately, my mind is like an orchestra. If you don't have the conductor, you don't know what to do. One guy is playing jazz, one guy is playing rock and roll, another classical. It's a big mess. ~ Goran Ivanisevic

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

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

I studied the lives of jazz singers who would tour Europe, and ... what I learned was life was big ride for them. They'd seen the dark side of humanity ... but touring the world playing jazz, it was a truly carefree way of living. A great escapism, if you like. ~ Gary Carr

If you're an impressionistic painter and you want to paint expressionism, you've got to change. You've got to figure out a way to do it and do it. If you've been playing jazz all your life and you want to start to play rock n' roll, blues, then do it. ~ Tobin Bell

Around age 11 or 12, I started playing jazz bass. From there, I went to electric bass and then guitar, which I kept up for a long time. ~ Joshua Roman

I know it sounds silly, but it takes some time getting used to all the cameras in your face. I think it's like playing jazz. After I learn the rules, I can have fun and play a little bit. ~ Monica Raymund

You never get it figured out. You just keep playing. ~ David Sanborn

Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance. ~ Francoise Sagan

When you're playing jazz, you have to somehow overcome that feeling of being intimidated because your aim is to portray that freedom in what you're playing. ~ Buddy DeFranco

As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction. ~ Stan Getz

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning. ~ B.B. King

I got into playing the jazz. I played jazz for a good while. I did the popular stuff first. You got the "Twelfth Street Rag" and those kinds of things. Then I got to hanging around with a bunch of guys starting to playing jazz. We'd go from one place to the other and take our instruments, just perform for free. ~ Papa John Creach

...teaching is like playing jazz. Even if you perform the same number over and over, it never comes out the same twice, and you don't know exactly how it will sound until you hear it. Teaching is like writing with your voice ~ Earl R. Babbie

You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played ~ Miles Davis

Jazz is what I play for a living. ~ Louis Armstrong

It doesn't matter if people are playing jazz or writing poetry
if they want to be successful, they need to learn how to persist and persevere, how to keep on working until the work is done. Woody Allen famously declared that "eighty percent of success is showing up." NOCCA (New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts) teaches kids how to show up again and again. ~ Jonah Lehrer

In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. ~ Charles Mingus

If I am playing any music at all it is jazz music. ~ Ginger Baker

I hate Stanley Clark, but I have to admit he's playing Jazz whether I like it or not. ~ Lester Bangs

You know, it's funny ... when you're making money, people don't think you're playing jazz. Now when you're not making money, people think that you're a good jazz musician. ~ Pete Fountain

Papi was a man split in two, / playing a game against himself. // But the problem with that / is that in order to win, you also always lose. ~ Elizabeth Acevedo

Like actors taking a role in a play. We wear our human faces and harbor our dramas and fantasies, but it's the same individuals playing the parts, as the play starts anew on a different stage, with different faces and forms. If it all goes well, a figure from the crowd joins the stage for the plays that follow, and the roles are refined. ~ Wildbow

Today, because I want to be gentle on my back, I listen to jazz. ~ Eric Ripert

Sometimes you'll see people give performances in comedy with an ironic detachment where they'll sort of be remarking on the character from outside of it. They're sort of commenting as they're playing the character. I think it's hard not to do that. I've certainly done that. ~ Zach Woods

I started playing guitar, like, when I was 17 or so, but where I'm from, you just don't hear about people moving to Nashville and making it. It was such a foreign thing to me. I never knew music was an option for me. ~ Kip Moore

I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; and (4) now we're playing for keeps. ~ Kenneth Adelman

Ren took his time perusing the menu and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. I didn't even pick my menu up. He shot me meaningful glances while I sat silently, trying to avoid making eye contact. When she came back, she spoke to him briefly and gestured to me.
I smiled, and in a syrupy sweet voice, said, "I'll have whatever will get me out of here the fastest. Like a salad, maybe."
Ren smiled benignly back at me and rattled off what sounded like a banquet of choices, which the waitress was more than happy to take her time writing down. She kept touching him and laughing with him too. Which I found very, very annoying.
When she left, he leaned back in his chair and sipped his water.
I broke the silence first and hissed at him quietly, "I don't know what you're playing at, but you only have about two minutes left, so I hope you ordered the steak tartar, Tiger."
He grinned mischievously. "We'll see, Kells. We'll see."
"Fine. No skin off my nose. I can't wait to see what happens when a white tiger runs through this nice establishment creating mayhem and havoc. Perhaps they will lose one of their stars because they put their patrons in danger. Maybe your new waitress girlfriend will run away screaming." I smiled at the thought.
Ren affected shock, "Why, Kelsey! Are you jealous?"
I snorted in a very unladylike way. "No! Of course not."
He grinned. Nervously, I played with my cloth napkin. "I can't believe you convinced Mr. Kadam to ~ Colleen Houck

I think we take for granted police officers and detectives that walk into some pretty heinous situations, and they really have to be very brave. So I love playing a character that's very brave - someone that kind of dives in the fire to figure out what's happened. ~ George Eads

My strongest hope is for a cameo as a band playing in a club visited by the detectives on 'Law & Order: SVU' during the course of an investigation, maybe during sound check, or something, so they can force us to stop playing while they question the sound guy. ~ John Darnielle

A psychic laywer is a lethal combination in a mother. ~ Cath Crowley

We were playing popular music, but we were doing our own arrangements because we were too lazy to sit down and figure out the originals. ~ Tommy Shaw

It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception. ~ Albert Einstein

Well, since I'm six years old, I've been playing the violin, the piano, I've been singing. It's always been a dream of mine, but I really never had the courage to actually go and do it professionally. ~ Paris Hilton

Blues and soul and jazz music has so much pain, so much beauty of raw emotion and passion. ~ Christina Aguilera

Dick is playing golf today. He asked if I would caddie for him, but I said I would prefer to have a complete stranger walk up and drill holes in my head with a Black & Decker. ~ Gillibran Brown

Once you accept that playing the game will be uncomfortable, and you do it for a while, it will become much easier (like it does when getting fit). When you excel at it, you will find your ability to get what you want thrilling. ~ Ray Dalio

I'm just very sort of compulsive and lack the ability to keep things in perspective. If I'm not writing or playing guitar or on the microphone or out on the road, I'm cleaning pots and pans or freaking out about some plumbing issue or tweeting. ~ Marc Maron

Katsa didn't know how long they'd been grappling when she realized he was laughing. She understood his joy, understood it completely. She'd never had such a fight, she'd never had such an opponent. She was faster than he was offensively-much faster-but he was stronger, and it was as if he had a premonition of her every turn and strike; she'd never known a fighter so quick to defend himself. She was calling up moves she hadn't tried since she was a child, blows she'd only ever imagined having the opportunity to use. They were playing. It was a game. When he pinned her arms behind her back, grabbed her hair, and pushed her face into the dirt, she found that she was laughing as well. ~ Kristin Cashore

They had grown out of childhood in the last few days. Christmas as Christmas had passed unnoticed since their father had died on Christmas day. Neeley's thirteenth birthday had been lost somewhere in those last few days. They came to the brilliantly lighted façade of a big vaudeville house. Since they were reading children and read everything they came across, they stopped and automatically read the list of acts playing that week. Underneath the sixth act, was an announcement in large letters. 'Here next week! Chauncy Osborne, Sweet Singer of Sweet Songs. Don't miss him!' Sweet Singer... Sweet Singer... Francie had not shed a tear since her father's death. Neither had Neeley. Now Francie felt that all the tears she had were frozen together in her throat in a solid lump and the lump was growing... growing. She felt that if the lump didn't melt soon and change back into tears, she too would die. She looked at Neeley. Tears were falling out of his eyes. Then her tears came, too. They turned into a dark side street and sat on the edge of the sidewalk with their feet in the gutter. Neeley, though weeping, remembered to spread his handkerchief on the curb so that his new long pants wouldn't get dirty. They sat close together because they were cold and lonesome. They wept long and quietly, sitting there in the cold street. At last, when they could cry no more, they talked. ~ Betty Smith

It takes generosity to discover the whole through others. If you realize you are only a violin, you can open yourself up to the world by playing your role in the concert. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Getting out on stage and playing music for people feels great when people are cheering for you, that's obviously really exciting. But what's most exciting is the idea that we're all experiencing something that's bigger than us. ~ Dan Mangan

English banjo players really were a law unto themselves - you don't find that kind of brisk banjo playing on the original Louis Armstrong or Bix Beiderbecke records. ~ Pete Townshend

I like to think what I bring to the table is kind of a sympathetic and endearing quality, even while I'm playing outcasts or characters that end up in outlandish situations. ~ Jason Biggs

To play today in London, next week in Madrid and the week after that in Warsaw is a bit better than playing Newark and Baltimore and Philadelphia. I've been doing that for 20 years. ~ Norman Granz

Dropping the news to my parents that I was skipping my 'dream education' at Chalmers to sit at home recording videos while playing video games was not easy. ~ PewDiePie

As a player, I was fortunate to work with coaching and medical staffs that underscored the importance of utilizing injury prevention exercises, which contributed to my healthy and long playing career. ~ Cobi Jones

I will keep playing as long as my body lets me, and as long as I'm wanted by my listeners. Because music is the only thing that keeps me going. ~ Ravi Shankar

I was a little bit wary of playing Nicholas. In the script, which I think is true of the novel and the film, he's the only character not singing and dancing in a musical style. Playing someone who is the personification of good is a little difficult. ~ Charlie Hunnam

For me, acting in scenes with other people is like playing soccer with a bunch of legless five year olds. It's not really fair to them, but what else can I do, you know? ~ Zach Braff

One of the thrills of playing at the top tennis centres of the world is to see the Indian flag go up whenever I'm participating in these events. That's enough motivation for any Indian who has the opportunity to perform at these tournaments. ~ Sania Mirza

They realized I was alive again, even though I was playing an old, dying sop. ~ Christopher Plummer