T S Monk

A Jazz musician is supposed to find his voice, find his niche and do his thing.

Music is a gift and a burden I’ve had since I can remember who I was.

It’s true I’ve always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

There’s a way of playing safe, there’s a way of using tricks and there’s the way I like to play which is dangerously where you’re going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven’t created before.

I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns.

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

The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you’ve got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.

If you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!

[on Prince] I learned about music that didn’t have any barriers or any kind of, like, containment. I learned about wild, crazy topics and ways to express yourself that had never been written in quite that way before. I learned that a human being could be able to defy all stereotypes, and be the epitome of badassness.

With songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio I’m teeming with the drive to write.

Mozart in his music was probably the most reasonable of the world’s great composers. It is the happy balance between flight and control, between sensibility and self-discipline, simplicity and sophistication of style that is his particular province… Mozart tapped once again the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breath-taking rightness that has never since been duplicated.

Man, all music is folk music. You ain’t never heard no horse sing a song, have you?

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be Jazz.

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

I hear beauty and elegance combined with passion and fire.

My style is to just play. The more “live” you capture your music-the more unthought-out-the more magical it is.