Roscoe Mitchell Quotes

In some ways, jazz is the most precise of art forms and the loosest in the sense that it's all about improvisation, but the musicianship required is kind of insane. To actually play with real jazz musicians is a different level of musicianship that almost has no equal in any other form of music in the world.

The starting point of all great jazz has got to be format, a language that you can work within that, in some ways, is much tighter than the blues or even gospel. It's all working towards the same destination - the difference being that Miles Davis flew there, and I'm still taking the subway.

People think jazz music is all standards and the Great American Songbook. But it's really about the sensibility, the feel you bring to the music.

I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.

It is rare that even a jazz musician finds an individual voice.

Maybe a part of me recognized how right the improvising spirit of jazz is. Not the sounds, but the freedom to work with musicians who work that way. It felt very natural to me, but I think there's a way to do it without it being a jazz record.

Everyone has his own sound. I'm not going to presume how to tell anybody how to write.

I think that people should learn about that. In most music, there's one way that you do something, and that's the only way. In jazz, it's a lot different.

The point of jazz is, you do something and then you go on.

Jazz changes and all. But I don't know the names of what it is I'm doing.

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'm doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word - I love it.

You can start from any source material, and you can approach it with a jazz ear, and then it will become a jazz moment.

I can only do music if I can do it the way I can do it.

Even though the music I make gathers influences from all over the place, I feel that the core of what I do comes from the jazz tradition. In terms of improvisation, interaction, feel and overall concept, Jazz is my main source of information and inspiration.

If you're going to play bass, then play bass how you play bass. You can learn technique and theory, but we want to hear what you have to offer.

If the whole idea, in the original bebop days, was to get to soloing, then that's all it should be about.

I love playing jazz because I love the freedom you have to improvise. It has given me a feeling in my classical repertoire of creating the atmosphere of the here and now.

That's the thing about jazz: it's free flowing, it comes from your soul.

When you're an artist, all you're trying to do is self-express.

It does not matter how badly you paint so long as you don't paint badly like other people.

I think jazz has given me freedom with my voice.

If you copy then it is not self-expression.

To be a true artist, I have to be true to who I am now and write that way.

If I'm not a jazz player all the time, I've at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.