Brian Eno Quotes

Improvising is writing, too - there was no music and now there's music. So that's composition. And any time you take any sort of a performance liberty, you're making a compositional choice. I don't know a serious performer who hasn't made compositional decisions, who hasn't engaged in the art of composition.

There's no performance where I never have to think about setting up a phrase or making a technical adjustment while I'm performing.

Music is extremely intuitive, which acting too in a different way.

I do read music, but I prefer playing from the heart.

Jazz music is the power of now.

But the thing that will always occupy me the most is music.

I care about writing music and playing my music.

I love our industry. I love the song. I love the voice. I love it. Not necessarily my voice. But I care about the song and the voice.

Blues is my life. It's a true feeling that comes from the heart, not something that just comes out of my mouth. Blues is what I love, and blues is what I always do.

You have to know composition to be a good improviser.

What I have to do as a musician is do everything that is not on the music.

It's really only all about music. It's not like a big rocket scientist kind of philosophy or anything.

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 love hard singing.

To me, playing an instrument and singing, all of these different things are just as natural to me as rhyming.

There were no rules, other than that the song should sound good and be fun to play.

Music is the only thing I've ever known that doesn't have any rules at all.

I feel when acting, I am sometimes overly self-conscious; I think, 'Going, no, don't, put your eyebrow back where it was and, you know, turn to the left.' You know, I'm sort of very consciously adopting this character. But with music, I don't know. I found it was a question of just closing my eyes and just sort of letting things come out.

Music is passionate. It's love for me.

I look at my clarinet sometimes and I think, I wonder what's going to come out of there tonight? You never know.

My pure love is playing music.

It's always a live experience - anything that happens around you. It's so easy to just put it to a song.

I sang the National Anthem with soul.

I don't ever consciously change gears when I play jazz or classical. It's all music.

To be a good improviser, you have to study composition as a parallel. Because what improvisation is, on a high level, is spontaneous composition.