Stan Getz Quotes

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 wanted my voice to be a tenor sax, really.

Kenny G, I have to be grateful to him for proving that the instrument can be played all different kinds of ways.

As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.

Playing the sax and then enjoying jazz music, man - it's like I learned how to find words inside of the beat.

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen.

Playing and listening to music gives you a sense of fulfilment because you have to put everything in you at its disposal.

In essence, I feel I'm more jazz guitar player because I write vehicles geared for improvisation.

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.

Pianos - if they don't like what you're saying, then they won't talk back to you. And you want it to talk back to you.

Even if you've being playing together for years, there'll always be something new. You're constantly back phrasing, front phrasing, singing faster, singing slower.

As far as playing instruments, it just feels good to have it under your hands. Cause sometimes those instruments have minor imperfections. Sometimes because they're so old, they're always out of tune a little bit.

I played saxophone for a while when I was a kid.

I focused on the saxophone ever since high school. It wasn't until my album 'Poetica,' which I recorded in 2006, that I went back to the clarinet. It felt like it was waiting for me!

One doesn't have to scat to be a jazz singer.

My aunt Ruth Brown was a jazz musician. I got hooked on it at a young age, understanding what John Coltrane was doing playing two notes on the saxophone at the same time, which is impossible.

One of the things I love about jazz music is that intent is first and execution is second. In classical music, execution is first and intent is second, meaning that you must first learn a piece before you can truly add your interpretation to it.

Jazz musicians have always taken the standards of their time and performed them with a jazz sensibility.

I've tried to learn as much as I can about the great jazz singers to understand what makes them important, vital artists, but there is always something more to learn.

If you're a lay person listening to jazz, you don't necessarily understand everything that's happening within the form. But you get the sense of it, the feel of it, because you're getting to hear something that develops right in front of your face.

Nothing surpasses my performances with small bands, especially with Charlie Parker. A small band doesn't forestall creativity.

The way I was singing the songs was jazz

I'm not very good at playing piano, so I usually hit chords with my right hand. And those chords came, and I was just singing a little bit.

What I would really like to have been, given a perfect world, is a jazz pianist. I mean jazz. I don't mean rock and roll. I mean the never-the-same-twice music the American black people gave the world.

My first exploration through art was really through music - I've trained classically with piano for about ten years.