Peter Weller Quotes

I have a bachelor's and a master's in jazz.

As far as music school goes, I walked through Berkelee one time.

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

I think I was supposed to play jazz.

I've got a lot of friends with whom I discuss jazz.

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.

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

I like jazz but actually I didn't love it enough to study it for four years. It was boring.

Now, jazz institutions are more readily available for young people, but for me, the institutions were the bands that I was in. When I worked with Clark Terry, that was the beginning of school for me, and Harry Belafonte and Sergio Mendes, they were all my universities.

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 think jazz is a wonderful learning tool.

I'd like to expand on doing what I love and venture out a bit more. I would like to play consistantly good music. Eventually someday I would like to open up a school and teach kids about music.

As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.

I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home.

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

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

When I turned fifty, I decided to quit the mill and go to graduate school.

There is an awful lot of what I call recreational jazz going on, where people go out and learn a particular language or style and become real sharks on somebody else's language.

As I grew up, I was interested in other areas, too, especially literature. It became a major love of mine. Later, it became a difficult choice for me as to whether to major in music or literature. It wasn't until my 30s that I began a profession in music.

The month of September is Women in Jazz, so I'm doing jazz there in September. I'm in for the duration.

I was a good amateur but only an average professional. I soon realized that there was a limit to how far I could rise in the music business, so I left the band and enrolled at New York University.

So I was always around music and my dad was in his own way a progressive jazzer, a big band jazzer guy.

As I grew older, I actually was prepared to go into fine arts school and do a degree. That was what I was actually settled upon when I was offered a record deal.

I feel very honored to be playing with Bill Pierce. He's such a great musician.