Lee Konitz Quotes

I try to make my flow sound like a John Coltrane solo.

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 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.

I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.

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.

Grover Washington was my main influence, and when I went to college, I started listening to more of the jazz masters like Sonny Rollins, Cannonball Adderley, and John Coltrane.

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

One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.

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

It wasn't until I got out of the Army and I heard Coltrane's record 'Coltrane,' when he was doing 'Inch Worm' and 'Out of This World,' that I thought, 'Oh my God, you can do that?' And then I thought, 'OK, I better go back and listen to Eric Dolphy a bit.' And then I said, 'Hmm, I better pull out these Ornette Coleman records.'

I always leaned toward free jazz... experimental jazz and progressive jazz. I feel like jazz is just part of the flavor and palette that you have as a musician to experiment with.

My dad was really into avant garde jazz: Archie Shepp, John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders.

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

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.

Why can't jazz musicians just leave a melody alone?

When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly.

I can imagine an utter hatred for the jazz avant-garde.

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.

When somebody turned me on to a Coltrane record around seventh grade, I took up saxophone.

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.

As far as other instrumentalists, I used to love mellow sax players like Paul Desmond. I love piano.

I do find modern jazz quite tricky.

Coltrane would do what you'd get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians.