Terri Lyne Carrington

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

Our music artistry should not be disconnected from our lives or ourselves.

Jazz means many things to many people, but it’s all about choices.

Women bring something different to an instrument if they are respectful of their feminine aesthetic.

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific.

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

Life is a lot like jazz. It’s best when you improvise.

My neighbors always listen to very hip Jazz… whether they like it or not.

When Hank Jones had his night off, I would get somebody to take my place as intermission pianist and I’d play the show with Ella, so I would get a chance to play with Ray Brown and Charlie Smith as well.

If I were to call it black music, that would be untrue. I don’t know what that is, unless it would be some African drums or something.

The majority of people mistakenly feel they don’t need a live musical experience.

[On the word Jazz] There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s only a word. What’s in a name? Nothing! Cats say, Call me Muhammed so-and-so. But what’s the difference? A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music. Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa.

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.

A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!

When rock music came in, I wasn’t bitter about it. I was puzzled.

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

In this trumpet I hear our icons and the sound of the future.

I think the idea of a love song has changed. Most of the love songs we all loved as kids would be classified as funeral dirges now, you know, really super slow. I think nowadays the ballad has changed. It can have some up-tempo, some drums, some other things. ‘Forever’ would still be considered a ballad, I guess, but the tempo is probably more of a mid-tempo. The content is love song. I don’t know how to write anything else.