Jazz Musician quotes:

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Well, being a jazz musician is not a rose garden! -- Toots Thielemans
The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. -- Louis Armstrong
If he's a true symphony artist, he knows better than that because he knows that the only truly creative musician is the jazz musician. -- Buddy Rich
A jazz musician can improvise based on his knowledge of music. He understands how things go together. For a chef, once you have that basis, that's when cuisine is truly exciting. -- Charlie Trotter
I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It's not like I'm cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do. -- Carlos Santana
Astronomers, like burglars and jazz musicians, operate best at night. -- Miles Kington
In my view a jazz musician is a great musician -- Michael Parkinson
In my view a jazz musician is a great musician. -- Michael Parkinson
A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges. -- Benny Green
It is rare that even a jazz musician finds an individual voice. -- David Baker
I got my love of jazz from my stepfather, who was a jazz musician. -- Flea
When I'm working behind a camera, I feel like I'm trying to achieve something like a jazz musician does. -- Jack Welpott
Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does. -- Tony Wilson
Some people are born with a brain that has this weird, magical mathematical thing that makes them an amazing jazz musician. -- Andy Richter
Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear. -- Ralph Ellison
Some people think I'm a rock 'n' roll musician and some think I'm a jazz musician but, for me, there is no difference. -- Georgie Fame
The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous. -- Dave Brubeck
I started to listen to Japanese jazz musicians when I went to high school. Some people I listened to were Yosuke Yamashita, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Sadao Watanabe. -- Hiromi
Swing' is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a 'swing band' in music. -- Artie Shaw
I'd have no trouble being the barbecue kingpin of America. I'd just add it to all the other things I am: jazz musician, carpenter, architect, engineer and revolutionary. -- Bobby Seale
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
I was always very leery of my piano playing. As a young kid, I wanted to be a jazz musician, but my taste was far greater than my ability. -- Mike Stoller
As a jazz musician, you have individual power to create the sound. You also have a responsibility to function in the context of other people who have that power also. -- Wynton Marsalis
Grace Kelly plays with intelligence, wit and feeling. She has a great amount of natural ability and the ability to adapt. That is the hallmark of a first-class jazz musician. -- Wynton Marsalis
I really love jazz, but I will never be a jazz musician as much as I dream. But, I think that the jazz music I love is there in my music. -- Laura Mvula
The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago. -- Louis Armstrong
In classical music, love is based on bitin' -- imitation. It's not based on interpretation. A jazz musician, if he plays someone else's song, has a responsibility to make a distinct and original statement. -- Todd Boyd
Regarding jam sessions: Jazz musicians are the only workers I can think of who are willing to put in a full shift for pay and then go somewhere else and continue to work for free. -- George Carlin
I always tell my students when you're going to be a jazz musician the first thing you've got to do is be a professional musician, and that means you have to feed yourself with the instrument. -- Lester Bowie
I would not describe myself as an avid jazz fan and I am not a jazz musician myself. However, that is not to say that jazz does not play a vital and important role in my life. -- Nat Wolff
My secret dream has always been to be a jazz musician. I tried the saxophone for a year or two when I was younger, but unfortunately I had to face the fact that I was not really talented! -- Gaspard Ulliel
I went to Juilliard in New York and used to do cabarets just for fun. Occasionally, I would get together with a jazz musician and play at a restaurant for cash. And I've done some background vocals for recording artists. -- Nicole Beharie
A jazz musician is not a jazz musician when he or she is eating dinner or when he or she is with his parents or spouse or neighbors. He's above all a human being . . . the true artform is being a human being. -- Herbie Hancock
When I was a kid, I wanted desperately to be a jazz musician. I would practice the trumpet for hours, but when I got braces, that messed up my ability to play, so all of a sudden I had all this free time. -- Zach Woods
To date, [Wynton] Marsalis has received a total of nine Grammy Awards; a Pulitzer Prize (the first ever awarded to a jazz musician)... and twenty-nine honorary degrees, including Columbia, Brown, Princeton and Yale; the National Medal of Arts; and numerous awards from other countries. -- Randy Sandke
Comedians and jazz musicians have been more comforting and enlightening to me than preachers or politicians or philosophers or poets or painters or novelists of my time. Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz. -- Kurt Vonnegut
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. -- John Polson
Jazz is the greatest American art form and our greatest export. We don't pay attention to the youth of jazz, don't stoke the fires creatively for the youth coming up. I feel like jazz musicians became too much of purists - with Donald Byrd doing funk jazz in the '70s. -- Talib Kweli
I don't listen to a lot of music when I have my free time. But I'll go to a jazz club and have a drink and listen to a good jazz musician. Or sometimes in the morning, if I want to put myself in a good mood, I'll put on some Latin music. -- Joshua Bell
I'm not a jazz artist. Don't get me wrong now, it's all music to me. I just played music and if it's likeable, someone liked the sound, then fine, but I'm not interested in being a jazz musician. I don't consider myself a jazz musician. I don't have anything to do with that word. -- Pharoah Sanders
My father is a jazz musician, so I grew up hearing jazz. My parents loved it, but I didn't like it. It went on for too long. Yes, I had certain teachers that really inspired me, like Danny Barker, and John Longo. And I had no idea that I would have any impact on jazz. -- Wynton Marsalis
The age of 18 seemed the right time to try something different in my life. Moving to the U.K. was a risk, and I was never confident that I could ever make a full-time living being a musician, but I had to try. Initially, I worked as a jazz musician in pubs or with bands. -- Manfred Mann
I will never again play anything that does not have social significance. We American jazz musicians of African descent have proved beyond all doubt that we are master musicians of our instruments. Now what we have to do is employ our skill to tell the dramatic story of our people and what we've been through, -- Max Roach
I don't think I've ever been true to jazz. There's always a kind of jazz element to what I do. There are a very few genres that I haven't tried out, really, in what I've been doing. As a jazz musician, you can kind of mess about with things with a certain level of musicianship, which helps. -- Jamie Cullum
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I don't think of myself as a jazz musician but a medicine man. -- Abdullah Ibrahim
As any jazz musician knows, it takes flexibility and adaptability for improvisation to create beauty. -- Doc Childre
The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel. -- Wynton Marsalis
He's not a performer, he's not a composer, he's not even a musician, but Norman Granz is Mr. Jazz. -- Oscar Peterson
I'm a jazz musician by education and vocation, but I don't think jazz should [ dictate] what I want to do. -- Dave Douglas
If my name were Nubby Blues, I wouldn't be a jazz musician, I'd be a disabled Vietnam vet on welfare. -- Jarod Kintz
Once the jazz musician learns all the fundamentals they can keep track of a lot of choices in an instant. -- Sheena Iyengar
I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician. -- Dave Van Ronk
Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also. -- Yo-Yo Ma
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
It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most. -- Harry Connick, Jr.
I don't like heroin, unless you're a jazz musician and then you have to be on it because jazz is the sound of heroin. -- John Waters
At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music. -- Herbie Hancock
I became a professional musician and played all kinds of music. I played bluegrass, I played classical music, and for many years, I played jazz. -- Terry Teachout
I fear that I won't get better and that I won't have time to practice. To be called a "jazz musician" - it's a big responsibility. -- Esperanza Spalding
I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I'm a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary. -- Tom Waits
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
Many an American jazz musician has been beguiled by the lush melodies and sumptuous rhythms of Brazilian music, but Peter Sprague has taken the romance a good deal further than most. -- Andrew S. Gilbert
I actually wanted to be a jazz musician first. My grandparents introduced me to Louis Armstrong. I loved Louis Armstrong so I took up the trumpet and just did that every day and practiced that. -- Douglas Booth

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