Cecil Taylor Quotes

I was always very leery of my piano playing. As a young kid, I wanted to be a jazz musician, but my taste was far greater than my ability.

One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.

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.

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician.

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.

You need better technique than I have to play jazz, but what you have to do is the same thing, isn't it?

I'm a trumpet player, and I sing jazz.

In essence, I feel I'm more jazz guitar player because I write vehicles geared for improvisation.

My aunt Ruth Brown was a jazz musician. I got hooked on it at a young age, understanding what John Coltrane was doing playing two notes on the saxophone at the same time, which is impossible.

But you listen to Coltrane and that's something human, something that's about elevation. It's like making love to a woman. It's about something of value, it's not just loud. It doesn't have that violent connotation to it. I wanted to be a jazz musician so bad, but I really couldn't. There was no way I could figure out to learn how to play.

I can't really say enough about Chris Potter. He is one of the greatest musicians I have ever known, and every second I have been on the band stand with him has been an absolute pleasure.

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

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.

So our ears got used to listening to jazz in the place that it was that the bass player could not play. No one really realized it and really addressed it until the bass players who could play their instrument came along and started doing something with it.

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.

A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.

I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.

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.

Bill Evans is a real serious jazz pianist who, in my book, crossed over boundaries in terms of color. He used the piano as his canvas.

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

If you play the very subtle jazz tunes with acoustic pianos, acoustic bass and it's a dead standard, you are going to play very differently. It depends on the music.

Possibly, I should have been a jazz singer from the beginning.

I wanted my voice to be a tenor sax, really.

I feel very honored to be playing with Bill Pierce. He's such a great musician.