Horace Silver Quotes

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

Jazz is something that you have to feel. It's something that you have to live.

Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life.

What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

I never thought that the music called "jazz" was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic.

That.s what Jazz music is all about.We started the Messengers because somebody had to mind the store for jazz.No America--no Jazz. It is the only culture that America has brought forth.

I play music - I write my own music, but I play music, just background music really, and just let it happen.

Jazz is about freedom within discipline.

Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that.

Hopefully I'm bringing to rock n' roll the kind of spontaneity that I love, and always believed rock and roll stands for.

The iconoclastic mode, that specific mode of language, there is an element of it that it is punk - that is confrontational. That's just a part of the language of jazz - at a certain point.

I wanted to look at the mentality that can breed that sort of intensity, that kind of cutthroat, pressure-cooker feeling, especially a form of music like jazz, that should be - or you'd think should be - all about liberation and improvisation and everything.

The most important thing is that you honor that musical integrity, whether you make music that sounds like ABBA or you make music that sounds like Void.

That makes classical music work, the ability to improvise.

Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

There's many, many ways to write a song. But generally, sitting down at a table and writing is not one of them.

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

Jazz can be so serious, no sense of humor.

Jazz is all about improvisation and it's about the moment in time, doing it this way now, and you'll never do it this way twice. I've studied the masters. Why would I want to play ball after the guys who sit on a bench? I want to play like Michael Jordan.

That's kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You're out there predicting the future, and no one believes you.

Our songs were not written to be listened to in headphones or on the radio. They were written to be played. All of the little infinite detail that went into the arrangements and giving ourselves lots of breathing room in terms of playing what we wanted to play and using up any ideas that we had - all of those were conceived to be performed.

I agree totally with Metheny regarding the sound influencing the way you play.

My audience went, 'Wait, why is she singing jazz? What's going on?' And then they went, 'Oh, because she can. Because she loves it.' And jazz, a music invented by the African-American community, is the greatest art form, I believe, to have ever come out of this country.

Jazz has a tradition that has enriched the culture in America. The intellectualism of it does nothing but make you think on a higher level and make you a better person if you engage in the music and let it do what it does when it is played at its highest level.

What I love about jazz is the improvisation, the fact that you never know what's going to happen next.