Dianne Reeves Quotes

I just became accustomed to being all the members of the band. That was something that was really exciting to me.

I played the sax at school. I was in marching band.

I formed my first band when I was going to Valley Torah High School in Los Angeles.

When I was going to high school, in the high school band we would play these kind of hour-long concerts for our parents. All the parents would come to the gymnasium, and the band would play an hour-long kind of orchestra piece. 'Synchestra' is supposed to be similar, like a high school band orchestra piece.

I was in every band class I could get in, like after school jazz band and marching band, and that's where I really learned to read music from elementary all the way through junior high and high school.

My whole musical life has been an educational process, and I'm just furthering my education and filling in the blanks. There's stuff that I want to know that I don't know.

We would play, then they would play a set, then we would jam on the last song.

I don't much like things to go by somebody's name, like the 'Bob Jones Group Jam Band.'

There were so many specific things from high school jazz band that I remembered: the conductor searching out people who were out of tune, or stopping and starting me for hours in front of the band as they watched.

Because usually in the past when I was in a big band, that was all I did.

I started out singing in high school in the choir and in a garage band.

I'm a bass player from way back and Paul is a guitar player and we've been in many bands.

I did the marching band all throughout junior high and high school. Music was one of my favorite things in school.

I was in a band in high school and college and I always had a love for music, but I didn't go to a conservatory or anything like that. I was fairly self-taught.

I focused on the saxophone ever since high school. It wasn't until my album 'Poetica,' which I recorded in 2006, that I went back to the clarinet. It felt like it was waiting for me!

I was in a choir at school and we were part of the BBC Proms back in around 2002.

My dad was all about music. He was a musician, leading a band when I was born. His band was active all through the 40s. He'd started it in the late 20s and 30s. According to the scrapbook, his band was doing quite well around the Boston area. During the Depression they were on radio. It was a jazz-oriented band. He was a trumpet player, and he wrote and arranged for the band. He taught me how to play the piano and read music, and taught me what he knew of standard tunes and so forth. It was a fantastic way to come up in music.

I was about 10 when I first began to sing. My mother had been away for three weeks, and I learned 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina.' When she came back, I sang it in front of her, my auntie Linda, my father, my uncle Jim, and my grandmother.

I was in band all the way through high school, and I played in jazz competitions all across Iowa.

I have been making music since I was a kid. I have written music since I was, like, seven or eight. I was in the studio at 9, 10. So I've had a lot of practice over a lot of years.

I always felt of myself as a composer, performer, improviser. I've never called myself a jazz man. I make art.

I'm really a product of an excellent school system and supportive parents. My high school band director gave me recordings of Louis Armstrong, Kenny Ball, and contemporaries like Nicholas Payton.

I think I'm much more of a guitar-songwriter than a singer. I start with chords and then test out melodies rather than improvising over it.

The nice thing about the violin repertoire is that it's small enough that you can plan on learning everything at some point - whereas the piano repertoire is so enormous it wouldn't be possible unless you're a learning machine.

I always try, when I'm singing songs, to interpret them the way that I would've arranged them. I think about the melody first, and then I pull out my guitar and start singing it.