Thelonious Monk

I don’t know where Jazz is going. Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.

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

I like to sleep. There is no set time of day for sleep. You sleep when you’re tired and that’s all there is to it.

If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

All musicians stimulate each other. The vibrations get scattered around.

I call myself a blues singer, but you ain’t never heard me call myself a blues guitar man.

He almost adds a Chet-like sound to it.

Music should always be an adventure.

By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

It is better to be felt than to be heard.

I saw a vibraphone for the first time and knew immediately I had found my means of expression.

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

Play what you know and then play above that.

Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of half-fast.

I’m no good with chords. I’m horrible with chords.

Jazz music is the power of now.

Ah music… a magic beyond all we do here!

Whenever I’m in Kansas City, I think back to all the jazz-blues greats who played the blues here – like Count Basie, Charlie Parker and Jay McShann. I watched those guys jam in different places and heard a lot of things – but I couldn’t do what they did. They were too good.

You have to pack as much as you can in an hour or 70 minutes. This time around it was 15 songs, so it was a challenge to get them all the right length so you could get them all on.

The secret is keeping busy, and loving what you do.