Don Ellis Quotes

In the range of music that we play - roughly 300 years' worth-there really are more similarities than differences.

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

Blues is the first step to get to jazz.

I've always had a close connection to both rock and classical music.

What is music about? You can't listen to one era, one composer, and know what music is about.

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

I love... different kinds of music. I like classical music and pop music. I like alternative, and I like rap, hip-hop, and I kind of collected all these things that I love, and they infused my sensibilities, and I just wanted to sing because it felt like it needed to come out of me.

When I was younger I didn't really know what genre of music I'd want to do because I'd always done so many different types, so many impressions.

I think music is so diverse today, and bands are so diverse. If you were a rock band in the Eighties, you kind of had to stick to one thing. Now, in this age of Coachella and European festivals and stuff, it's kind of anything goes, so that allowed us to try different things.

A well-rounded performer will listen to all kinds of music. I like classical, Middle Eastern, and rock a lot.

I came along in the '60s having absorbed as much as I could up until then and added my own tastes and search into the equation. I guess that's how I see 'Now He Sings, Now He Sobs' in relation to the development of jazz in general.

There's no field of music which doesn't have good ideas.

I started out trying to play more straight-ahead jazz. I went to Berklee in the early '60s when it was a brand new school, and so there was no fusion music. There wasn't a lot of mixing together of different kinds of music at that time, so jazz was kind of pure jazz.

My CD collection has a lot of world music - lots of Indian, African, Portuguese, Greek, Italian music. Because of my husband, a lot of jazz, too.

I got into trad jazz, then modern jazz, then avant-garde jazz, between the ages of 16 to 18.

I think I have a more wider scope for music, I have more taste for music.

It's probably a combination of personal and non-personal matters that have led us to where we are musically.

Normally, things are viewed in these little segmented boxes. There's classical, and then there's jazz; romantic, and then there's baroque. I find that very dissatisfying. I was trying to find the thread that connects one type of music - one type of musician - to another, and to follow that thread in some kind of natural, evolutionary way.

Now I listen to all kinds of music except rap, which all sounds the same to me.

I kept on buying records and listening to them. Finally, I was able to hear the relationship between the jazz improvisers' solos and the underlying structure that it's based on, the chord progression. That was pretty easy to do in the swing era, y'know, when jazz was, like, pop music, you know. It had made the charts and everything like that.

At the end of the day I want to be the guy who experienced music in all type of ways, with hip-hop being the roots of it.

Me as an artist, I've ventured off into doing all types of music. I'll do a jazz album, you know what I mean.

I can't re-define music every week!

Between Prince and my dad's fusion-jazz records, I didn't have a choice in being funky.

My folks have played everything from rock, disco, pop, funk, and blues. My dad has always brought and played different genres like jazz, classical, and Latin. With all this in my pocket, I feel I have a taste of everything for my influences.