Evelyn Glennie Quotes

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

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.

This band makes sure that we have whole sections of stuff that are free form so that they don't know what we are doing next, that is the fun part of playing. You are playing something that you haven't ever played before.

You know. I'll try anything. I'll do anything. I'll explore. Try different takes. All that kind of stuff to do sometimes, to do good performances, but always conducive to having a good time creatively.

I've always done very 'composed' music and worked-out solos. But sometimes it's fun not knowing where you're going.

Singing is a limitless form of expression, and I love to experiment with my work.

I have learned a lot from jazz. I compare good acting to jazz music. The more you study and prepare as an actor, the more equipped you are to live in the moment. Just like the gifted musicians in my dad's quartet, it takes a courageous actor to be free.

If you're always playing the correct notes, there's something wrong - you're not searching; you're not reaching for anything.

Composition is selective improvisation.

When it's time to make music, that's about getting lost for me. To be a control freak is not half as good as being a freak who's casually in control. You're feeling around in the dark for something that feels good.

I like to improvise.

Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear. There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.

The apparatus has to serve our improbability and improvisation. Being good and playing the songs is not enough.

Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.

I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

See, there were certain rules I'd always used, and people like Trane, they would break those rules.

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

I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.

Choreography and creativity - it's my matrix; let's see where we can move.

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.

I don't work out a lead section and practice it for a day and then lay it down. I don't do that. The first time I do something I think is expressive or really cool, that's what's actually on the recording.

The art of interpretation is not to play what is written.

Every day I look forward to getting with my instruments, trying new things.

I like both music and acting, and they both have a lot in common - timing, immediacy, stuff like that. But acting is more regimented. You wait around for hours, you don't get to write the script, you get hired. Music represents me better. I'm not acting; I'm just expressing myself.