Aaron Copland

The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.

You may be sitting in a room reading this book. Imagine one note struck upon the piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room – proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle.

You may feel depressed, but it can’t be so depressing that you can’t move. No, I would say that people create in moments when they are elated about expressing their depression!

The inspired moment may sometimes be described as a kind of hallucinatory state of mind: one half of the personality emotes and dictates while the other half listens and notates. The half that listens has better look the other way, had better simulate a half attention only, for the half that dictates is easily disgruntled and avenges itself for too close inspection by fading entirely away.

Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.

Some twenty years ago, during the course of a memorable evening at the Stravinskys’ home in Los Angeles, the venerable maestro turned to me and said in no uncertain terms: ‘My dear, you should conduct your own music. All composers should conduct their own music!

Forgive me if I don’t have the words. Maybe I can sing it and you’ll understand.

It’s always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don’t know where it comes from, it’s just there and I don’t question it.

It bugs me when people try to analyze Jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not, it’s feeling.

Music was our wife and we loved her. We stayed with her, clothed her and put diamond rings on her hands.

When you hear my lyrics, you hear the shots that I throw at people. I throw shots because I always been the underdog. I got rejected so many times, and I say it in my lyrics constantly.

Jazz translates the moment into a sense of inspiration for not only the musicians but for the listeners.

You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere.

There’s only one bass player in a band. I’m the best bass player of any band I’m in.

I sing like I feel.

I play the way I do cause it allows me to come up w/ the sickest sounds possible. That’s the point now isn’t it?

Whenever I’m in Kansas City, I think back to all the jazz-blues greats who played the blues here – like Count Basie, Charlie Parker and Jay McShann. I watched those guys jam in different places and heard a lot of things – but I couldn’t do what they did. They were too good.

It’s easy in music to tell what’s good. It’s hard to tell what’s bad.

The qualities in music I consider most important are beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination and sincerity.

Miles Davis and John Coltrane were so cool, if alive today global warming wouldn’t be an issue.

When I achieved what I thought the musicians were trying to do, the sound sort of bloomed. When it’s right, everything is beautiful.