I wasn't a trained Mickey Mouse club performer. I played in jazz clubs and restaurants.
One of the most important functions of jazz has been to encourage a hope for freedom, for people living in situations of intolerance or struggle.
Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.
Many fail to realize this great recording industry was built by so-called jazz artists. And at the other end of the spectrum, a base in European classical music as well.
My own Brubeck Institute in California is turning out fantastic young jazz players, and I know great things will happen.
But if you listen to great piano players, both classical and jazz, there's a huge range of dynamics and colors and emotional expression that's possible with the instrument.
I took several years of dance lessons that included ballet, tap and jazz. They helped a great deal with body control, balance, a sense of rhythm, and timing.
I love jazz and pop rock and country. I grew up listening to Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Def Leppard, AC/DC, Anne Murray - if I hear something really great... I want to be a part of it.
Every good gospel singer you can hear is a scat singer; they're just using different syllables. There are a lot of jazz singers out there, and more coming out of the churches.
I listen to Neil Young and jazz and classical stations and, if my girlfriend's driving, it tends to be Hall & Oates.
I know of musicians who have played together for decades who hate each other. The Modern Jazz Quartet for one.
I'm not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.
I'm really getting to appreciate traditional jazz now - the New Orleans stuff - a lot more than I did before.
I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group.
When I was 12, I began listening to John Coltrane and I developed a love for jazz, which I still have more and more each year.
I was a total music nerd. I grew up on Perry Street in the '80s. My father wrote books about jazz, so I was always at the 'Village Vanguard.'
I listen to all kinds of songs. There's something to be learned from every type of music and from the one making it, whether it's pop or jazz or hip-hop.
You know I want to sing for people, I want to jazz people up I want to make new music that they've never heard.
Jazz of the sort we play is a happy, extroverted music. You don't have to think about it too much.
Me as an artist, I've ventured off into doing all types of music. I'll do a jazz album, you know what I mean.
If one takes all the styles in jazz harmonically from the earliest beginnings to the latest experiments, he still has a rather limited scope when compared to the rest of music in the world.
