I have made a film about jazz that tries to look through jazz to see what it tells us about who we are as a people. I think that jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a kind of look into our redemptive future possibilities.
Jazz should be recognized as music of the people, based in a lot of accents and melodies. What is jazz but music that people danced to? Jazz has the dynamic thing. I don't think you have to be playing only Charlie Parker licks on your horn or whateve...
Growing up, I'd already decided I wanted to be a beatnik. A Bohemian poet, I thought. Or a musician. Maybe an artist. I'd dress in black turtlenecks and smoke Gitanes. I'd listen to cool jazz in clubs, getting up to read devastating truths from my no...
Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures.
So I went into jazz and performed in jazz clubs all over the country.
Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm.
One interesting thing about jazz, or art in general, but jazz especially is such an individual art form in the sense that improvisation is such a big part of it, so it feels like it should be less soldiers in an army and more like free spirits meldin...
I have a difficult relationship with jazz. My parents really love it, and I went to a school where jazz was considered the best thing ever, so I had to leave it be for a long time. But now I'm rediscovering it. I'm approaching jazz in a different way...
Jazz came out of New Orleans, and that was the forerunner of everything. You mix jazz with European rhythms, and that's rock n' roll, really. You can make the argument that it all started on the streets of New Orleans with the jazz funerals.
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!
I recorded my first jazz record in the '70s.
My dad is a big jazz fan, and that was the reason I first got into jazz.
The French - they like jazz, they've been on jazz a long time.
If I'm not a jazz player all the time, I've at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.
The month of September is Women in Jazz, so I'm doing jazz there in September. I'm in for the duration.
I haven't a great jazz band, and I don't want one.
Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.
If I am playing any music at all it is jazz music.
Growing up, I was very much interested in jazz music.
It was liberating to do comedy. It felt like playing in a jazz band.
The most common misconception about me is that I'm basically a jazz singer.
