Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.
I didn't plan on rock-n-roll. I wanted to learn jazz; I got to know some people doing rock-n-roll with jazz, and I thought I could make some money playing music.
I studied classical music for a year. Then, I studied jazz for a year at the New School, and then I got kicked out. You had to go to your class, so I don't know if that counts as studying. I didn't study jazz. I was supposed to.
Jazz isn't dead yet. It's the underpinning of everything in this country. Whether it's a Broadway show, or fusion, or right on through classical music, if it's coming out of the U.S., it's not going to survive unless it's got some jazz influence.
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.
I've been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet.
A wedding is like a funeral, but with musicians.
Actors always want to be musicians, and musicians want to be actors.
Folk musicians have a lot of the same self-importance, but they're way more cruel and jealous than rock musicians - I know this for a fact because I used to be a folk musician.
I'm not a deaf musician. I'm a musician who happens to be deaf.
I couldn't get my album played over the so-called smooth jazz stations. Jazz stations would not play it. You don't always know who you're making that soul connection with.
I've played with all of the heavyweights in the modern jazz, progressive jazz movement. I've been fortunate enough to play with them, a who's who. All of those guys, I've been fortunate enough to have performed with.
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...
My mother was a jazz fanatic and she wanted me to play the piano so I could play jazz tunes. I wish I had learned but I was too busy getting into trouble!
I don't want to do free jazz! Because free jazz - which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering - isn't actually free at all. It's just constrained by what your muscles can do.
I'm comfortable singing jazz. The only thing I was concerned about is that everybody, even in jazz, has their own style. To me, the queen of doodling was Ella Fitzgerald, and scatting is something I never thought I could do.
It's certainly no coincidence that big bands became the entertainment of the army in WWI and WWII, and that jazz drumming style is very military influenced. The snare drum comes from the military and becomes the core kind of sound of jazz drums.
What I believe to be jazz is constructed and improvised music which is in the air right now. But I don't think that's most people's definition of jazz, you know? We don't know what we're talking about, because we don't know the definition.
In the '60s, people were still very protective of each field that they belonged to. Avant-garde artists didn't know about rock or pop or jazz. And the jazz people of course didn't want to know about any other music. They were all just kind of protect...
If you've enjoyed the dance, pay the musicians.
