I started off with classical music, and I got into jazz when I was about 14 years old. And I've been playing jazz ever since.
To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.
In a way, the history of jazz's development is a small mirror of classical music's development through the centuries. Now jazz is a living form of original music, while classical music has gotten to the end of its cycle in terms of exploring its form...
We don't live in a jazz world, unfortunately. I think if I had lived in a jazz world, I would have done OK. I'm not sure I would have done great. I'm a lover of jazz music, so I would have been happy, don't get me wrong. I go to jazz concerts like th...
What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.
I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.
The guitar for me is a translation device. It's not a goal. And in some ways, jazz isn't a destination for me. For me, jazz is a vehicle that takes you to the true destination - a musical one that describes all kinds of stuff about the human conditio...
People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play.
Jazz is a music of great achievements but speed and chops serve a different function in jazz.
Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.
I listen to old jazz and classical music, and that's it.
I also like Western classical music and jazz.
I started out playing traditional jazz, and I still do: I love standards, I love the music. But it must move on, and it must live and breathe, and continue to grow, and continue to change, and continue to mesh with other music - all that kind of stuf...
I like to listen to classical music... I like mainline jazz.
Jazz really does try to include everything. It's always been popular music. But the wonderful thing about jazz is its willingness to take chances.
I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.
I'm moved by a lot of different kinds of music, whether it's pop music or R&B or straight-ahead jazz or free or opera or music from all parts of the world.
The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.
I love many kinds of music: world music, jazz, classical, pop.
Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.
Jazz, for me, is a closed circuit, like the term baroque in the world of classical music.
