Aaron Copland

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

Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self- consciousness.

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.

When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.

Most jazz players work out their solos, at least to the extent that they have a very specific vocabulary.

In my opinion, I think sarcasm and humor in a song, without turning it into a novelty song, is really charming.

I always try to teach by example and not force my ideas on a young musician. One of the reasons we’re here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.

Well if I could play like Wynton, I wouldn’t play like Wynton.

Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line.

Last time I saw Count Basie, he was in a wheelchair. They wheeled him up onto the stage, he sits down at the piano, and he gives the downbeat, and that band played like they were in heaven. And right in the middle, the band cuts. He had to take one hand and put the other on it, and he comes down with one note. And it was the greatest note I ever heard in my life.

Music should always be an adventure.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.

Music’s a good thing, it calm the beast in the man.

Don’t settle for style. Succeed in substance.

If one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.