Roberta Flack Quotes

If he's a true symphony artist, he knows better than that because he knows that the only truly creative musician is the jazz musician.

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.

I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician.

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.

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 some ways, jazz is the most precise of art forms and the loosest in the sense that it's all about improvisation, but the musicianship required is kind of insane. To actually play with real jazz musicians is a different level of musicianship that almost has no equal in any other form of music in the world.

I listened to classical music. I listened to jazz. I listened to everything. And I started becoming interested in the sounds of jazz. And I went to a concert of Jazz at the Philharmonic when we lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and I saw Charlie Parker play and Billie Holiday sing and Lester Young play, and that did it. I said, 'That's what I want to do.'

Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.

As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.

What I'm doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word - I love it.

So I went into jazz and performed in jazz clubs all over the country.

I started out trying to play more straight-ahead jazz. I went to Berklee in the early '60s when it was a brand new school, and so there was no fusion music. There wasn't a lot of mixing together of different kinds of music at that time, so jazz was kind of pure jazz.

People think jazz music is all standards and the Great American Songbook. But it's really about the sensibility, the feel you bring to the music.

I'm thrilled when I hear the greatest jazz musicians. They continue to search in ways other musicians do not.

Thelonious Monk was one of the musicians I most connected with early on. I'm a huge Betty Carter fan, and the way that Abbey Lincoln and Shirley Horn grew immensely from the time they were young is so inspirational.

Rock & roll fan that I am, Thelonious Monk is probably my favorite musical artist.

I've always gravitated toward technical music in general. I love jazz fusion.

I hear many extra-musical things somehow in Coltrane.

I think Wes Montgomery is the greatest jazz guitarist that ever lived.

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.

Jazz was more of a tool for me to use to enhance my musicality.

I grew up listening to John Coltrane and jazz, so they were subtle influences. I sometimes think about doing some kind of weird jazz record, but I don't know... It's on my list of things to do. I don't want to have to then go promote it.

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.

Bernstein grew up in my building in New York. He's a very, very fine player. When he was a kid, he came by to find out what was going on in the world of jazz.

I think that people should learn about that. In most music, there's one way that you do something, and that's the only way. In jazz, it's a lot different.