Don Ellis Quotes

When you make a film like this, you must have the highest expectations of your audience. Having worked in situations where we have the lowest expectations of our audience.

I expect the audience to come up to my level. I am not interested in compromising my music to make it palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass.

Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you're listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music.

Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair.

You can only be as good as your audience. Sometimes you can be as bad as your audience, but you have to remember you can never be better than them.

A good stand-up, you lead the audience. You don't kowtow to the audience. Sometimes the audience is wrong. I always think the audience is wrong.

Music is a performance and needs the audience.

Audiences are very willing to be taken somewhere, and to ask an audience beforehand what it wants is probably, I think, a mistake. Much better you should tell them what you want and hope they agree with it.

How does my music connect to an audience? That is just a complete mystery to me.

I am too pure for you or anyone.

I think there are people who use classical music to say, 'I am better than you, because I know all the rules and you don't.' You're not allowed to have fun or entertain.

Don't give it to the audience; leave it to the audience.

No social class, intellectual category or art form is immune to the snob virus.

The film itself should interact with the audience. In the case of 'Queen of Katwe', people are laughing, sobbing and dancing. I am taking them on a ride... It is not like I am asking them for handouts.

I don't mind snobs, if they have a reason to be a snob.

I feed off the audience a lot, their energy.

I play for the audience's pleasure. What I expect from them is not important; it's what they expect from me.

I think a lot of audience members don't realize the part that they play in live theatre. The audience actually has a mood. Sometimes they're tired and bored, and we have to wake them up and engage them.

I don't surround myself with a lower quality of human.

I think a show is more of an interacting with fans than you just singing songs.

The live events are more interactive for the fans. With TV, you have the cameras there, commercial breaks where the fans can tell there's a down moment. At the live events, it's non-stop. We get to play with the audience; the crowd gets to get involved a little more. It's a very intimate feel.

When you have a great audience, you can just keep going and finding new things.

The audience is your first collaborator with the material. If that makes sense.

My tastes are simple. I like only the very best.

Arrogance and snobbism live in adjoining rooms and use a common currency.