Martini & Jopparelli's Music Selections

A bounch of Jazz quotes and a delightful mix!

What is the true spirit behind Jazz? Let’s try to get an idea through the words of his protagonists.

Jazz is a mental attitude rather than a style. It uses a certain process of the mind expressed spontaneously through some musical instrument. I’m concerned with retaining that process.

Bill Evans

The thing that is making jazz healthy today is that people are coming out of other backgrounds – from rock, folk, from ethnic music. It’s changing the music, and for the better.

Billy Taylor

One thing I like about jazz, kid, is that I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Do you?

Bix Beiderbecke

Hipness is not a state of mind, It’s a fact of life.

Cannonball Adderley

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.

Charles Mingus

Thelonius Monk went over to Bird and Bud Powell and said, ‘I told you guys to act crazy, but I didn’t tell you to fall in love with the act. You’re really crazy now.

Charles Mingus

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.

Charlie Parker

You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

Charlie Parker

It’s always interesting to me that any time anyone hears something new they immediately have to categorize it or they don’t feel comfortable. It’s also one way not to experience something.

Dave Friedman

Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that.

Dizzy Gillespie

All the music you’ve ever heard in your life is somewhere in your head. I don’t reject that, I use it.

Don Pullen

It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line

Duke Ellington

Roaming through the jungle of “Ohs” and “Ahs” searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats.

Duke Ellington

Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It’s not an occupation or profession, it’s a compulsion.

Duke Ellington

You may have holes in your shoes, but don’t let the people out front know it. Shine the tops.

Earl Hines

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’m not here to raise hippie consciousness, I’m here to wet some panties.

Jaco Pastorius

I don’t separate one era of jazz from another, because I listen to everybody… Everybody takes from everybody else and adds their own thing and goes on from there.

Sonny Criss

If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.

Thelonius Monk

Jazz music is the power of now. There is no script. It’s conversation. The emotion is given to you by musicians as they make split-second decisions to fulfill what they feel the moment requires.

Wynton Marsalis

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 16th, 2012 at 10:00 am. It is filed under Jazz Music and tagged with Bill Evans, billy taylor, Bix Beiderbecke, Canonball Adderley, Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker, Dave Friedman, Dizzy Gillespie, Don Pullen, duke ellington, Earl Hines, Greg Thomas, Jaco Pastorius, Sonny Criss, Thelonious Monk, Wynton Marsalis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.