Lee Konitz Quotes

I allow a lot of room for improvisation and funny stuff. I always feel planned.

Once, right before a show, I realized I'd forgotten shoes. I didn't want to wear my flip-flops onstage because I could trip. I ended up going barefoot, which actually worked out because it became my 'thing.'

Only someone who is well prepared has the opportunity to improvise.

I don't plan. I don't think, 'I have to do this kind of part 'cause I've done that kind of part.' I'm not a very good planner.

I never work out my leads. Everything I do is usually totally spontaneous. If someone says, 'That was good; play that again,' I'm not able to do it.

When I do an hour-and-a-half show, if I don't improvise 20 minutes worth of new material each night, I feel I've let myself down.

You have to be ready to sing and perform at any time.

I like to think that we've got a plan, so let's stick to it. That said, once we've stuck to it, we're allowed as much improvisation as anyone cares to indulge themselves in.

The apparatus has to serve our improbability and improvisation. Being good and playing the songs is not enough.

I'm always amazed by writers who tell me they plan everything at the beginning. I feel their writing days must be very bland.

You can't plan everything - if I did a performance exactly how I rehearsed it, it would be so boring.

You must plan to be spontaneous.

Classical stuff takes a lot of rehearsal time and preparation, but with stuff that involves improvisation, you can over-rehearse it and it gets stale. You don't want it to be too comfortable. In fact, a good sound check, a good rehearsal usually means a bad performance.

I think a show is for fun, and the thing about playing live is that you make mistakes, and that's what's sort of exciting about it.

If I do a bit on stage, I prepare too much. Those bits are all really, really carefully written, and overwritten, and researched. I really don't feel like I can wing it. So I write it out word for word, and when I'm onstage I'll improvise around it.

If a leaf fell from a tree, I'd stop juggling and play with the leaf. I went to my prop bag and got a little bandage and stuck the leaf back on the tree. People loved it.

In a way, as an actor, you do all the preparation and then you want to forget it and just play the scene. As a director, you can't forget it because somebody will remind you that you forgot something. But you can know your plan well enough that you still have a certain amount of freedom.

I don't like a lot of rehearsing.

Set lists are tough because you come up with this structure of how the songs are going to go from one to the next, but at the same time, you have to be spontaneous and take requests and change the set list at the drop of a hat.

I don't have a plan for a story when I sit down to write. I would get quite bored carrying it out.

I can tell jokes. I can talk to the audience. I can relax. I can change my songs whenever I want. I can change the tempos. I can change the mood, because I'm in charge.

It's thrilling to be onstage and to not know, literally, what the next moment is going to bring. To just submit to the not-knowing-ness of it.

I've always felt that I'm in a spontaneous business and if you script something, if you plan something, it will sound that way.

Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise.

My act is sort of improvisational. I have a skeleton in my head, but no fat or skin on it.