John Otto Quotes

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.

When you are studying jazz, the best thing to do is listen to records or listen to live music. It isn't as though you go to a teacher. You just listen as much as you can and absorb everything.

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.

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.

I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man.

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

I understood jazz, I understood how it worked. That's what I apply to everything.

I wanted to be a jazz musician.

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.

I've always gravitated toward technical music in general. I love jazz fusion.

Yeah, I grew up playing lots of jazz music in school.

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.

I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz.

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

If I am playing any music at all it is jazz music.

I always tell people that, just to be a bad jazz musician, you have to be better than most musicians. The worst jazz musicians are normally better than most musicians, because you have to know so much.

Jazz is very much a part of my life. I work with the Thelonious Monk Institute and do the artwork for their program every year.

I went to jazz school. Not to say I'm a great jazz musician, but I studied under some great teachers. It was an important part of my life.

We all know that jazz demands a cultivation of the mind.

I'm a jazz musician, and I really wanted to not miss an opportunity to have the full connection to jazz.

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

If you really dissect hip-hop you will find a whole lot of Charles Mingus, Ron Carter, Ahmad Jamal, a lot of classic jazz samples in there.