Andre Previn Quotes

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.

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

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

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've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.

I always tell people that, just to be a bad jazz musician, you have to be better than most musicians. The worst jazz musicians are normally better than most musicians, because you have to know so much.

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be some jazz.

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

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of jazz.

I think everybody has to kind of decide what the word 'jazz' means to them, and that's fine.

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.

The first thing is, jazz is one of the few things to let you know that there is a God and there is a creation.

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

As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.

I think jazz is actually quite unforgiving in its disdain for nostalgia. It demands creativity and change at its highest level.

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.

So I went into jazz and performed in jazz clubs all over the country.

I was exposed to jazz early on.

Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does.

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.

Thelonious Monk was one of the musicians I most connected with early on. I'm a huge Betty Carter fan, and the way that Abbey Lincoln and Shirley Horn grew immensely from the time they were young is so inspirational.

My foundation is jazz. I do all the things jazz musicians do.

When I started music, I started out in Puerto Rico with classical music. But what really made me want to be a musician was jazz, and because I didn't grow up with jazz, I had to learn it from a very basic level. I had to go into the history and learn everything about the development of the music, all the players and all that stuff.

Truth be told, I think jazz is a mind-set. It's not necessarily, like, this guy picked up a horn and did this or whatever.