"The reward for playing jazz is playing jazz."
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Music quotes
Music
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Music quotes (page 19 of 156)
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"There's always that argument to make - that you're in better company historically if people don't understand what you're doing."
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"An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences."
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"Oh, I'm a martyr to music."
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"I cringed when I heard myself described as a Jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a Jazz vocalist."
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"You'll shoot the moon... put out the sun... when you love someone."
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"The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence."
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"The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one's own human failing."
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"I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music."
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"Music is the shorthand of emotion."
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"Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist."
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"Jazz isn't like pop, where you sell millions of records with a hit. Your spirit and soul aren't important in pop music. But jazz is like classical music. If people like you, they'll remember you and you'll last forever."
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"I am not fitted to give concerts. The audience intimidates me, I feel choked by its breath, paralyzed by its curious glances, struck dumb by all those strange faces."
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"I believe musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others."
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"Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?"
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"All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it."
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"... Grateful Dead - that's it !! ... nobody in the band liked it, (the name) I didn't like it, either, but it got around that that was one of the candidates for our new name, and everyone else said, 'Yeah, that's great.' It turned out to be tremendously lucky. It's just repellent enough to filter curious onlookers and just quirky enough that parents don't like it."
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"The time to hesitate is through."
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"Little Wing is like one of these beautiful girls that come around sometimes ... you play your gig; it's the same thing as the olden days, and these beautiful girls come around.. you do actually fall in love with them because that's the only love you can have. It's not always the physical thing of "Oh, there's one over there ...", it's not one of those scenes. They actually tell you something. They release different things inside themselves ... "Little Wing" was a very sweet girl that came around that gave me her whole life and more if I wanted it."
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"Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power."
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