Dianne Reeves Quotes

Don't be afraid to take liberties with this music. Try and put some of yourself into it.

For me, jazz offers so much freedom in the way the music can be interpreted. It's natural to me. It's where I feel most free.

I like to capture the spirit of what the writers intended but find my own nuances. That comes from jazz - the invention and freeness within a structure.

I never considered Miles Davis a perfectionist; I always considered him as an excellence-ist, where deviation is actually kind of cool.

I think that's what I love about jazz is that you can do what you want, and you're allowed to mess up.

People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play.

I was curious and hungry at a young age, and jazz was such a mystery to me, an ocean where you can express yourself in the moment. It represented freedom, it represented wearing wings and going somewhere with music.

This is what really makes real jazz musicians: people coming out with their own voice.

What I love about jazz is the improvisation, the fact that you never know what's going to happen next.

I wasn't trying to sound like anybody else. Basically, I was just experimenting all over the place.

I got my style. I got my own way of playing. I'm a musician. I'm self-taught.

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 is an octopus. It will take whatever it can use and it will work with it.

I think jazz has given me freedom with my voice.

One thing that sticks in my mind is that jazz means freedom and openness. It's a music that, although it developed out of the African American experience, speaks more about the human experience than the experience of a particular people.

Usually I like to improvise. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the piece, I like to improvise because I think it brings certain freshness and a reality to it, as long as it doesn't go too far out of the box.

What I always try to do is to respond to the song; I've always rebelled against theory.

Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.

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

Let me explain something about guitar playing. Everyone's got their own character, and that's the thing that's amazed me about guitar playing since the day I first picked it up. Everyone's approach to what can come out of six strings is different from another person, but it's all valid.

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

Any talk of 'craft' makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it's like the first time. There's no craft in that.

One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people were doing.

My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it. I'd like to think I did that.