Saxophone quotes:

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Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you. -- Charlie Parker
Saxophone is one thing, and music is another. -- Steve Lacy
I am a saxophone player. -- Nick Offerman
I play saxophone, I play tenor sax. -- Andy Serkis
The potential for the saxophone is unlimited. -- Steve Lacy
I play drums, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, french horn, piano. -- Norman Wisdom
I wanted an electric train for Christmas but I got the saxophone instead. -- Clarence Clemons
I wanted to play saxophone, but all I could get were a few squeaks. -- Stevie Ray Vaughan
You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others. -- Steve Lacy
If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice. -- Stan Getz
My world was a community ballet school, a marching band, my two sisters and my girlfriends. I played saxophone in the band and was a bit nerdy. -- Jennifer Garner
The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body. -- Stan Getz
I remember once, when I started writing for the alto saxophone, a saxophonist told me to think of it as being like a cross between an oboe and a viola, but louder. -- Gavin Bryars
The sax solo as we know it today would not exist without Gerry Rafferty. His 1978 soft-rock classic 'Baker Street' has to be the 'Ulysses' of rock & roll saxophone, giving the entire chorus over to Raphael Ravenscroft's sax solo, creating one of the Seventies' most enduringly creepy sounds. -- Rob Sheffield
As a horn player, the greatest compliment one can get is when a person comes to you and says, 'I heard this saxophone on the radio the other day and I knew it was you. I don't know the song, but I know it was you on sax.' -- Clarence Clemons
And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I'm going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I'm going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan. -- David Bowie
I played saxophone and trumpet. Pretty nerdy. -- Kesha
You can make a saxophone into an electric organ; you can do everything with it -- Gerry Mulligan
When somebody turned me on to a Coltrane record around seventh grade, I took up saxophone. -- Tom Verlaine
I like to hear melodies that go from one extreme to the next- saxophone to a bell to a whistle, for instance. -- Roscoe Mitchell
I practice my saxophone three hours a day. I'm not saying I'm particularly special, but if you do something three hours a day for forty years, you get pretty good at it. -- Kenny G
I like what Oliver Lakes does on the saxophone. The saxophone comes pretty close to the sound of the human voice and when Oliver plays with other sax players, it's like a dialogue. -- Yusef Komunyakaa
So I'm looking to the saxophone as a resource which has its own unique set of possibilities. I'm looking to exploit them and develop them and have the fullest range of possibilities of the saxophone be known. -- Evan Parker
I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. -- Donald Miller
I always hated jazz guitar. I loved jazz saxophone but I hated jazz guitar. If I would buy an organ trio record I would make sure I'd buy one that did not have a guitar player on it. The sound was awful! -- Tom Verlaine
Play difficult and interesting things. If you play boring things, you risk losing your appetite. Saxophone can be tedious with too much of the same. -- Steve Lacy
I've played every instrument you could possibly think of for 10 minutes. So I'm mediocre at everything. I can play drums, guitar, piano, violin, saxophone, clarinet, flute... Just not well. -- Kat Dennings
I love the sound of the saxophone. It became my singing voice, and it sounds so human. The saxophone could carry the words past the border of words. It can carry it a little bit farther. -- Joy Harjo
I started realizing that music is the one area where I've always let go. When that saxophone goes into my mouth, I get into a space where I never think about the notes I've already played or anticipate the notes ahead. -- Kenny G
Actually, when I was in elementary school, I saw a saxophone. A band came to my school, and I saw this guy get up and play this solo. And I said, 'Oh man, what is that! That must be fantastic!' -- Ornette Coleman
I used to play too with a boy who played a saxophone. We didn't play no blues, we'd play a lot of love songs - 'Stardust', 'Blue Moon', 'Out Cold Again', 'Sophisticated Lady', 'Stars Fell On Alabama', a lot of different stuff. -- David Edwards
Any saxophone player will have those influences come through in their music in a very different way. I can listen to the same 10 sax players as someone else for my entire life, and we'll both play completely differently. That's the beauty of being a musician. -- Kenny G
My first album didn't come out until I was 27, which in pop years is late, you know. But when it came time to arrange it, I became a kid in a toy shop. I had a harp and a saxophone quartet and a symphony orchestra. I went berserk for a time. -- Bjork
I skipped school one day to see Dizzy Gillespie, and that's where I met Coltrane. Coltrane and Jimmy Heath just joined the band, and I brought my trumpet, and he was sitting at the piano downstairs waiting to join Dizzy's band. He had his saxophone across his lap, and he looked at me and he said, 'You want to play?' -- Donald Byrd
My father is a real idealist, and he's all about learning. If I asked for a pair of Nikes growing up, it was just a resounding 'No.' But if I asked for a saxophone, one would appear and next day and I'd be signed up for lessons. So anything to do with education or learning, my father would spare no expense. -- Hugh Jackman
Music is one of the noblest callings I can think of. It's the highest of all the art forms to me. For example, if my kid said to me, 'I want to give it all up,' whatever it is that they're doing, 'and I want to take my saxophone and go out,' I would say, 'May God go with you. This is a great and noble thing that you're doing.' -- Hugh Laurie
The saxophone is the embodied spirit of beer. -- Arnold Bennett
I don't know why, but I like the saxophone. -- Matt Dillon
It's great to hear someone really care for the soprano saxophone. -- Rufus Reid
I'm a little musically inclined; I play the clarinet and the saxophone. -- Joel Murray
I spend a lot of time copying saxophone players and trumpet players. -- Bill Frisell
The saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I'm more interested in music. -- Steve Lacy
The worst waste of breath, next to playing a saxophone, is advising a son -- Kin Hubbard
I practiced saxophone eight hours a day for the first two years I played. -- Stan Getz
I've got a real love-hate thing with the saxophone. I've got to be careful. -- Alan Sparhawk
You can make a saxophone into an electric organ; you can do everything with it. -- Gerry Mulligan
Making a painting is like playing the saxophone. You hit the note and it comes out. -- Julian Schnabel
I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone. -- Steve Lacy
Cello is my first instrument, then piano, drums, bass, violin, recorder, saxophone, but I'd never play them live! -- Dev Hynes
Where science is a dignified waltz in three-quarter time, magic is an improvised saxophone solo: all gut checks and synchronicities. -- Michael G. Williams
Bill Justis was a saxophone player, good musician, arranger, and friend of mine who had a big hit called Raunchy. -- Ray Stevens
Bill Justis was a saxophone player, good musician, arranger, and friend of mine who had a big hit called 'Raunchy.' -- Ray Stevens
I understood that if I wanted to work, the saxophone was the main instrument. The clarinet was what we call a double. -- Lee Konitz
I like referring to the saxophone and having a guitar lick instead. Same with the cymbals; having the cymbals and not playing cymbals. -- Mike Gordon
I've been working on the soprano saxophone for 40 years, and the possibilities are astounding. It's up to you, the only limit is the imagination. -- Steve Lacy
In elementary school, in my lunchbox, I used to pack a saxophone. I could have been a chef, a culinary artist, and all that jazz. -- Jarod Kintz
I have not practiced saxophone since 1980. I mean, not one note. I do not pick it up in my house, and that's the end of it. -- John Zorn
When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration. -- Van Morrison
I grew up with classical music blasting in my parents' living room and my older brother's practicing saxophone in his room listening to jazz... a beautiful chaos. -- Josephine de La Baume
When you play a sax, that saxophone is irreverent. It's noisy; it's a trickster... you cannot hide the saxophone in your hands, so it's a good teacher. -- Joy Harjo
Nobody was playing the soprano saxophone and certainly nobody was trying to do anything with it. So I was all alone. I didn't know that at first. -- Steve Lacy
Not what you would call a musical family, but my father used to play saxophone, and I discovered many genres of music when I was a child. -- Rokia Traore
I can't play any horns. Every time I tried to take saxophone lessons as a kid ... I can't whistle. I don't know if that has anything to do with ... -- Pete Yorn
Talking about the all night concerts, I did some of the first all night concerts back in the 60's with this little harmonium, and I also had saxophone taped delays. -- Terry Riley
The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception. All you can do is play melody. No matter how complicated it gets, it's still a melody. -- Stan Getz
...black music is a group music. That's why I don't like doing a solo saxophone thing: My feeling stems from rhythm, I really have to feel that rhythmic thing happening. -- Jimmy Lyons
You know, when I'm playing, I think of myself in front of the Wailing Wall with a saxophone in my hands, and I'm davening, I'm really telling it to the Wall. -- Stan Getz
The saxophone is the cocaine of the woodwind family, the sax teacher continues. Saxophonists are admired because they are dangerous, because they have explored a darker, more sinister side of themselves. -- Eleanor Catton
I am a frustrated saxophone player. If I could, I would abandon all of my books, and I would trade it all if I could play the way people I admire play. -- Robert Pinsky
The drum is the heart of music. The saxophone can play and then rest, as can all of them except the drums; the drummer keeps going - he can't afford to stop. -- Jo Jones
I played in the high school band. I was the one baritone saxophone out of 80 other people. No one could tell whether I was hittin the right notes or the wrong notes. -- Bobby Keys
I played in the high school band. I was the one baritone saxophone out of 80 other people. No one could tell whether I was hittin' the right notes or the wrong notes. -- Bobby Keys
Throughout the evening I would be recording these long saxophone delays and about four hours into the concert, if I wanted to take a break I would just play back the saxophone. -- Terry Riley
A lot of my video work is super lo-fi on purpose. I'm not trying to become technically super proficient. The only thing I'm interested in becoming technically proficient on is my alto saxophone. -- Matana Roberts
If all else fails, I could go to a train station and open up my saxophone case and make some bucks. I can do "Mary Had A Little Lamb," I can do "Happy Birthday." -- Sean Price
The saxophone was created to mimic the human voice and I think that's why I gravitated toward the saxophone eventually. I'd loved the clarinet, but there's something about the saxophone that just grabs you. -- Matana Roberts
After one month with a saxophone shoved in my mouth, my military combatant's enthusiasm disappeared completely. Instead of flying choppers behind enemy lines, I started to fantasise about living in New York, London or Paris. -- Gilad Atzmon

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