Ken Peplowski

My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often -in fact, mostly -at the expense of everything else in my life.

I kinda went back to that period between ’88 and ’94 where I felt like I was the most creative, without being hindered by powers that be. I was no longer going to try to hinder myself to what I thought was going to be on the radio.

You know at an early age if you have a talent for music.

The whole thing of being in music is not to control it but to be swept away by it.

Master your instrument, master the music and then forget all that and just play.

A musician’s responsibility is to get as much of his art across to the public as possible.

I always play what I feel. I always feel like me, but I’m a different me every day. I get ideas from everything. A big color, the sound of water and wind, or a flash of something cool. Playing is like life. Either you feel it or you don’t.

Creativity shouldn’t be following radio; it should be the other way around.

When you are so strongly drawn to music, you can’t ‘not’ be a musician.

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

I always wanted to play the piano, and jazz appealed to me.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking… The new inventive phrases we make up to describe things – all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

Everything I’ve ever done was out of fear of being mediocre.

Jazz music grabs you to the point where it never lets you go until the very last breath.

When you listen to someone improvise, the notes that are played are only half the story.