Dianne Reeves Quotes

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.

I don't worry too much about the fundamentalist principles that are in almost any discussion about jazz.

If he's a true symphony artist, he knows better than that because he knows that the only truly creative musician is the jazz musician.

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.

I'm thrilled when I hear the greatest jazz musicians. They continue to search in ways other musicians do not.

I went to jazz school. Not to say I'm a great jazz musician, but I studied under some great teachers. It was an important part of my life.

The people at Jazz at Lincoln Center are an amazing group and have done a phenomenal job teaching kids and audiences of all ages about jazz.

I'm a jazz musician, and I really wanted to not miss an opportunity to have the full connection to jazz.

If you don't already know about jazz music, how would you be exposed? How would get an opportunity to find out if it spoke to you? If you get exposed to it enough, you might find a taste for it.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

I missed jazz, kind of. And by the time I came to it in life, it was too intimidating to enjoy thoroughly.

I think Wes Montgomery is the greatest jazz guitarist that ever lived.

Bernstein grew up in my building in New York. He's a very, very fine player. When he was a kid, he came by to find out what was going on in the world of jazz.

When I began listening to saxophones, I was first attracted to Coleman Hawkins.

Whenever I open a book about jazz, I turn to the index and look for Lennie Tristano, the incredible pianist; Lee Konitz, the luminous alto sax player; and Warne Marsh, the tenor player who captured some of the most beautiful sounds in the world.

I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician.

I've met a lot of jazz musicians in my day, and they're all funny.

I heard Mr. Wild Bill Davis. I heard him play in 1930 and he told me that it would take me fifteen years just to learn the pedals, the pedals of the organ and I got mad.

At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music.

I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man.

People who don't do jazz think it's black magic. But really, it's just a matter of getting used to it. It's fun to gamble. The trick is not to fall back on the things you've done before.

Bill Evans is a real serious jazz pianist who, in my book, crossed over boundaries in terms of color. He used the piano as his canvas.

What I believe to be jazz is constructed and improvised music which is in the air right now. But I don't think that's most people's definition of jazz, you know? We don't know what we're talking about, because we don't know the definition.