Ken Burns

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

Jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a look into our redemptive future possibilities.

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

For years the trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We starved.

A Jazz performance centers upon the process of creation. The final objective is not only the finished product, but the path and process taken towards it.

Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.

While many attempts have been made to define Jazz, what’s the point really. Jazz is to be experienced – period.

It’s not what you do, but the way you’re doing it and in the end that’s all that we have.

A lot of singers think all they have to do is exercise their tonsils to get ahead. They refuse to look for new ideas and new outlets, so they fall by the wayside… I’m going to try to find out the new ideas before the others do.

You don’t rehearse Jazz to death to get the camera angles.

I have music inside me and I’m very lucky to be able to play music and that’s the way that I try to do it.

If you dig it, do it. If you dig it a lot, do it again.

I’ll always remember when I first heard Lester [Young]. I’d never heard anyone like him before. He was a stylist with a different sound. A sound I’d never heard before or since. To be honest with you, I didn’t much like it at first.

And then when I found my sound, it took me two and a half weeks to find my sound and when I did I pulled out all the stops, all the stops I could find.

Play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing even if it does take them 15, 20 years.

Musicians need enough experience to develop a vocabulary.

Gershwin was right in his time, at his time. Everybody else was behind.

A Les Paul feels like a guitar and I play differently on that and I sound too much like someone else.