Esperanza Spalding Quotes

If you don't already know about jazz music, how would you be exposed? How would get an opportunity to find out if it spoke to you? If you get exposed to it enough, you might find a taste for it.

Jazz is a constant theme in my life. My father is a jazz pianist, and from an early age I have been surrounded by it.

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be some jazz.

I believe deeply that jazz is still a very vital music that has much to say, not just to eggheads, or whatever the musical equivalent of an egghead is, but to ordinary people.

Now is a good time, 10 years ago would have been a good time, and 10 years from now it will still be a good time to see a dynamic, entertaining movie that's wall-to-wall Miles Davis where the music will hopefully spark some desire to know more about the man.

The people in Japan know more about the history of jazz and the musicians than the people in the United States do.

When I began listening to saxophones, I was first attracted to Coleman Hawkins.

My dad is a big jazz fan, and that was the reason I first got into jazz.

I never studied jazz technically; I just know and love the music.

Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does.

I think people psych themselves out before they listen to jazz a lot, thinking that they have to, like, put on a suit or something. That's not what it is.

The people at Jazz at Lincoln Center are an amazing group and have done a phenomenal job teaching kids and audiences of all ages about jazz.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

I got my love of jazz from my stepfather, who was a jazz musician.

I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.

So much of what I create has been due to the influence of Miles Davis and Donald Byrd, and so many of those that have passed on. Their music, their legacy lives on with the rest of us because we are so highly influenced by their experience and what they have given us.

Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.

I was really trying to sell to people who hate jazz: to make a case for the art form as youthful and energetic, not the sort of rarified intellectual activity it's painted as.

Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it.

I just don't know anything about jazz, really. I've never really listened to it, but I'd definitely like to discover more about it.

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.

I've met a lot of jazz musicians in my day, and they're all funny.

Sometimes you need to stand with your nose to the window and have a good look at jazz. And I've done that on many occasions.

People sometimes say it takes a long time to become a jazz fan, but for me it took about five seconds.

I still love the whole history of jazz. The old things sound better than ever.