Keith Jarrett Quotes

The starting point of all great jazz has got to be format, a language that you can work within that, in some ways, is much tighter than the blues or even gospel. It's all working towards the same destination - the difference being that Miles Davis flew there, and I'm still taking the subway.

Even though the music I make gathers influences from all over the place, I feel that the core of what I do comes from the jazz tradition. In terms of improvisation, interaction, feel and overall concept, Jazz is my main source of information and inspiration.

A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.

I think that the jazzy approach that I have is based on the way that I hear music and in the way I play a supporting role to the other people in the band.

This is what really makes real jazz musicians: people coming out with their own voice.

I suppose technically I could say I'm based in jazz, just because it's the school of thought that I've been encouraging myself to operate within.

Well, being a jazz musician is not a rose garden!

I sounded like myself. People be saying I sound like Miles or Clifford Brown.

My father is a jazz musician, so I grew up hearing jazz. My parents loved it, but I didn't like it. It went on for too long. Yes, I had certain teachers that really inspired me, like Danny Barker, and John Longo. And I had no idea that I would have any impact on jazz.

I think that people should learn about that. In most music, there's one way that you do something, and that's the only way. In jazz, it's a lot different.

The point of jazz is, you do something and then you go on.

As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.

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

So the whole basis for jazz music is based on the fact that the bass player could not play his instrument.

I don't think I've ever been true to jazz. There's always a kind of jazz element to what I do. There are a very few genres that I haven't tried out, really, in what I've been doing. As a jazz musician, you can kind of mess about with things with a certain level of musicianship, which helps.

I would say that jazz is my own language.

I don't think anybody really super-consciously tries to develop a style to play.

I already experimented with free jazz in the 1960s and, in my opinion, to play free jazz, you have to be a perfect musician and a perfect human being - and none of us are!

I don't know any jazz stuff. I don't know how to jam in that way. So jamming, for me, is writing a tune.

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.

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.

Whatever it is, music should sound spontaneous, I've derived a great deal of pleasure from playing jazz and having the knowledge of that spontaneity.

You can start from any source material, and you can approach it with a jazz ear, and then it will become a jazz moment.

My thing was, I loved music. I played music: I played the saxophone. So the little bit of music knowhow I had, I tried to implement that in every thing I did, from my style, my cadence, the way I tried to pause and stagnate it; that all came from John Coltrane and listening to jazz albums. Trying to rhyme like a jazz player.

If the whole idea, in the original bebop days, was to get to soloing, then that's all it should be about.