Cecil Taylor Quotes

In the performance sense, I find that interpretation is improvisatory in nature. You can go anywhere with an interpretation on any given day.

The rule is to try and never play the same thing twice when you have the freedom to do that in the song.

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

As an improviser, my nature is to take a theme and constantly rework it.

I never sing a song the same way twice.

When I do a take, I very often try things that I haven't planned to try to see if I can pull it off.

That is a big danger, losing your inspiration. When I work in film and television I try to do each take a little differently. I never want to do the same thing twice, because then you're not being spontaneous, you're just recreating something.

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

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

I'm not able to go in with an act that I use month to month year to year all the time. It's constantly evolving and changing and that keeps me on my toes but certainly adds to the challenge.

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

I record cello Etudes that are fewer than four minutes long and post them on YouTube. How can one execute fully-formed ideas with utmost perfection, yet stay free enough to allow improvisatory nuance? This has immediate application in almost every area of life, but especially in performance.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

With human beings it could be argued that all music-making is, in essence, grounded in improvisation.

Jazz is all about improvisation and it's about the moment in time, doing it this way now, and you'll never do it this way twice. I've studied the masters. Why would I want to play ball after the guys who sit on a bench? I want to play like Michael Jordan.

Improvisation is too good to leave to chance.

I ad lib. I've gotta bring my own into it.

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

With solos, I don't like to be too prepared going in - I like to surprise myself.

This is why improvisational music and comedy is so inspiring: You are seeing something being born, and that energy, there is no substitute for. These songs, most of them, are about a minute old when you hear them.

My act is sort of improvisational. I have a skeleton in my head, but no fat or skin on it.

With 'Friday Night Lights,' we were encouraged to make it our own and improvise as much as we wanted.

I play like I always used to, with no agenda. And, every once in a while, I will play something I really hadn't thought about or even intended to play. And I'll go, 'Whoa! What was that?'

I don't practice or write stuff down - everything I do onstage was just made up before I went on.

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