Chick Corea

My one thing is I continue to be interested and want to be a student. I don’t want to be a master. When I’m learning something, I’m in my element.

The sound of the orchestra is one of the most magnificent musical sounds that has ever existed.

The fact that an artist is experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we’re in it together.

Only a spiritual being has awareness.

Art is a subject that is inundated with opinions. In fact, that’s all it is about is opinions.

Only play what you hear. If you don’t hear anything, don’t play anything.

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

I played in rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands.

First of all, I never strive for identity. That’s something that just has happened automatically as a result, I think, of just putting things together, tearing things apart and putting it together my own way, and somehow I guess the individual comes through eventually.

I went through a lot of mental pains and anguish about choosing between jazz and classical. I realized that where I functioned was where I should be, and where I functioned was in jazz, so that was it.

All that I’ve played, all that I’ve sung, I couldn’t have done any other way.

You want the listener to find the song on their own, give too much away and it takes away from the imagination.

Music should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise. It’s easy to rediscover part of yourself, but through art you can be shown part of yourself you never knew existed. That’s the real mission of art. The artist has to find something within himself that’s universal and which he can put into terms that are communicable to other people. The magic of it is that art can communicate to a person without his realizing it.

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.

Just to keep it interesting I’ll tune the guitar randomly, so I don’t know what’s going to come out.

I met up with George Shearing about a year before my mother passed away. When I was 11 years old, Mama took me to the Edgewater Inn in Seattle and I was able to sit down and play piano for George and a lot of (the set list) was songs I had heard from the album, ‘Concerto For My Love.’ Then, after Mama died, my dad and I went to actually hear him perform at the Edgewater Inn when I was 12. Oh my gosh! It just really got me into playing piano.

I’m a fan first. I believed Duke Ellington when he said there’s no bad music, just some of it is presented badly. As a kid, hanging around Church Street, the presentation of music was so powerful, I couldn’t help but jump for joy. I had discovered art, or truth, or whatever you want to call it; I had seen a light I’d follow forever.

If you got up on the bandstand at Minton’s and couldn’t play, you might get your ass kicked.

The true musician plays what he/she hears. That cannot be a mistake.

There are a million good tunes.

Three months. I was playing the organ for three months. It was a challenge for me in the beginning.