Paul Kreibich

Apparently Jazz is now considered high art and the average person has trouble understanding it.

There’s a spiritual satisfaction that one gets from listening and playing good Jazz.

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

Jazz music is the real deal.

Jazz standards are our contribution to music history.

The expression of freedom that is Jazz improvisation mirrors the ethos of the best parts of society.

When I began listening to saxophones, I was first attracted to Coleman Hawkins.

If the audience doesn’t hear what is going on, is it going on?

It angers me how scholars associate the blues strictly with tragedy.

Art should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise.

You can practice to learn technique, but I’m more interested in conceiving something in the moment.

There’s a sadness to all kinds of music if you want to hear it. There’s also happiness to it if you want to hear it.

In fact, I heard Bird first, and had got well into listening to him. You know, it’s the kind of accidental thing that awareness of a player is: what’s available, what somebody happens to play for you.

I like to know for whom I’m writing – it makes the composition easier to do.

Playing the guitar is like telling the truth – you never have to worry about repeating the same [lie] if you told the truth. You don’t have to pretend, or cover up. If someone asks you again, you don’t have to think about it or worry about it because there it is. It’s you.

Check out the albums, … Check out the live performances. That’s the reality of it all. Music is such an energizing thing.

What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?

Keep searching for that sound you hear in your head until it becomes a reality.

Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass.

In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it’s a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don’t listen.

I sing like I feel.