Mike Stern

I want people to walk away with the same joy, hope and love that I put into my music.

Sometimes there are no gigs, but the main thing is still the music.

The deeper you get into the music allows the ability to appreciate art and all other forms of expression.

Your humanity is your instrument.

You never get it figured out. You just keep playing.

Women have not been socialized to play drums. It’s not natural for us to hit thing.

Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

[moving to Las Vegas] It was sort of like a man getting married – you don’t have to go out looking for girls, you’ve got your girl with you. I could go to casinos any time I had money and wanted to, so I actually went less.

You don’t know what love is, until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues, until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose.

I heard Mr. Wild Bill Davis. I heard him play in 1930 and he told me that it would take me fifteen years just to learn the pedals, the pedals of the organ and I got mad.

It’s spontaneity that has always characterized Jazz music’s finest improvisers.

Typically I go in the studio and whatever I’m contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don’t come in with lyrics… I just go in and let it happen.

They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

Jazz affirms the noblest aspirations of character, individual discipline, perseverance and innovation.

The great jazz instrumentalists taught me how to sing and interpret a song. they showed me how a horn can have as much personality as an actor.

They always want to sell me as a hard bopper.

I discovered very early that it wasn’t quite enough for me to imitate people.

I think that what is important is that the music be honest and direct and that it is relevant to today.