Carla Bley

Listening is more important than anything because that’s what music is. Somebody is playing something and you’re receiving it.

When you are studying Jazz best thing to do is listen to records and live music as much you can and absorb everything.

I don’t know where Jazz is going. Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

However it goes, I’ll just keep playing. That’s where the basic satisfaction is at.

Music doesn’t have to hop to be hip, as long as it swings it sings.

If you’re going to make a mistake, make it loud so everybody else sounds wrong.

The way I look at it, they’re all part of my musical diary, and I can listen to any one of them and it will bring up memories of what was going on at that time.

Jazz fans love Miles and I love him for a myriad of reasons, but the overviews are always too simplistic.

Most of the soloists at Birdland had to wait for Parker’s next record in order to find out what to play next. What will they do now?

I didn’t need to worry about keys, chords, melody if I had that emotion that brought tears and laughter to people’s hearts.

Jazz is not to be sliced into bites by mass marketing geniuses who assume we are mindless cattle.

You can’t listen to what people who aren’t musical have to say. When Anytime was released, I had bad reviews, and at first I was hurt. Your songs are like your children. You don’t want to hear, ‘Your kid is ugly.’ But I knew the record was good and it would sell.

If my own work had more importance than any others, it’s because the piano is the key instrument in music.

Blues is to Jazz what yeast is to bread; without it, it’s flat.

Just give a drum roll, announce my name and I come out and sing. I have a contract that says I’m a singer. So I sing.

At times as a performer they segregated us in some of theatres.