Brian Stokes Mitchell Quotes

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.

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.

I think jazz is actually quite unforgiving in its disdain for nostalgia. It demands creativity and change at its highest level.

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.

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

But sometimes that title 'jazz' can vex people who think they know exactly what jazz always is and will be.

I don't know how much more what I've done is any more important than what Ella Fitzgerald did. Ella crossed those lines, as did George Benson before me. There've been lots of people who brought a pop audience to jazz because they were able to link the two and give people easy access to the world of jazz.

I think I represent a more left-wing view of what jazz is.

I listen to jazz mainly. Mainstream jazz.

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.

Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.

The first thing is, jazz is one of the few things to let you know that there is a God and there is a creation.

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

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.

Kenny G is not real jazz. I don't even think Wynton Marsalis is real jazz. I don't think Harry Connick Jr. is real jazz. If there is such a thing as real jazz, The Lounge Lizards is real jazz, Henry Threadgill is real jazz, Bill Frisell is real jazz, you know?

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

Jazz changes and all. But I don't know the names of what it is I'm doing.

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.

I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz.

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

I'm an old Coltrane disciple just like I'm a Christian.

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.'

For me, jazz offers so much freedom in the way the music can be interpreted. It's natural to me. It's where I feel most free.

I think of jazz as being homage through innovation. Don't quote that as a definition, but it comes pretty close.

My foundation is jazz. I do all the things jazz musicians do.