Quotes by Ornette Coleman

About Ornette Coleman:

Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman was an American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s, a term he invented with the name of an album. Coleman's timbre was easily recognized: his keening, crying sound drew heavily on blues music. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1994. His album Sound Grammar received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for music.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something.

Ornette Coleman

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

All the things that human beings suffer from are how their environment treats them, and how the elements of their planet affects their mind and body - like radiation, cancer, and all.

Ornette Coleman

I mean, if you decided to go out today and get you an instrument and do whatever it is that you do, no one can tell you how you're going to do it but when you do it.

Ornette Coleman

I'm having this conversation with you now. I'm talking, but I'm thinking, feeling, smelling, and moving. Yet I'm concentrating on what you're saying. So that means there's more things going on in the body than just the present thing that the person's...

Ornette Coleman

I've been playing with Blackwell over 20 years. We used to play when I first went to Los Angeles. Blackwell plays the drums as if he's playing a wind instrument. Actually, he sounds more like a talking drum.

Ornette Coleman

It's just someone has labelled us as having a different label to do what you do. I find that labels are the worst thing in the world for artistic expression.

Ornette Coleman

No one has to learn to spell to talk, right? You see a little kid holding a conversation with an adult. He probably doesn't know the words he's saying, but he knows where to fit them to make what he's thinking logical to what you're saying.

Ornette Coleman

Originally, I wanted to be a composer. I always tell people, 'I think of myself as a composer.'

Ornette Coleman

So, for instance, if you came to me, I'd ask, 'Do you want to write? Do you want to improvise? Why do you want to play this instrument? What do you want to do?'

Ornette Coleman

That's why I haven't been so anxious. But now, lots of people write and say, 'I want to find out what you're doing.' So I know that this book will enlighten them.

Ornette Coleman

To me, human existence exists on a multiple level, not just on a two-dimensional level, not just having to be identified with what you do and what you say.

Ornette Coleman

You don't have to worry about being a number one, number two, or number three. Numbers don't have anything to do with placement. Numbers only have something to do with repetition.

Ornette Coleman

I decided, if I'm going to be poor and black and all, the least thing I'm going to do is to try and find out who I am. I created everything about me.

Ornette Coleman

I don't know what they're thinking about. Just because someone says, 'I like what you do' or something: They might like it today and tomorrow they might not. I've had that experience with record companies.

Ornette Coleman

I remember once I read a book on mental illness and there was a nurse that had gotten sick. Do you know what she died from? From worrying about the mental patients not being able to get their food. She became a mental patient.

Ornette Coleman

Actually, I have another record I made with them in 1976, but I've had such a bad experience with record companies, because I keep my head so much in music and not in business.

Ornette Coleman

Most of my relationships have been like that - with record companies. I've never had a legitimate business relationship with a company. I've always had a personal relationship with someone in the company.

Ornette Coleman

I remember once, we got an interview, and he said, 'Dad, these people are writing about me like I'm an adult. Don't they know I'm a kid?' I have never tried to encourage him to get a music image like other musicians have.

Ornette Coleman

Even when you write it, someone's got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you're still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I'm really pro-human beings, pro-expre...

Ornette Coleman

Author Bio

  • NameOrnette Coleman
  • DescriptionAmerican jazz musician
  • AliasesRandolph Denard Ornette Coleman
  • BornMarch 9, 1930
  • DiedJune 11, 2015
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionComposer; Trumpeter; Saxophonist; Jazz Musician
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship; MacArthur Fellows Program; Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award; Praemium Imperiale