The people in Japan know more about the history of jazz and the musicians than the people in the United States do.
Billy Higgins

As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.
Charlie Haden

Jazz to me is a living music. It's a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.
Dexter Gordon

Certainly one of the more common experiences in the jazz field is discovering someone new. Improvising musicians are capable of being musical travelers, voyagers. We want to join in on whatever we hear. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape.
Gary Burton

It seems that jazz is more cerebral and more mathematical in a sense.
Rita Coolidge

Jazz was my first love.
Frankie Valli

I listened to Billie Holiday a lot in order to learn to sing. She remains one of the extraordinary jazz singers. But my intent is to become my own voice, to be able to interpret these songs in my own way.
Madeleine Peyroux

The first thing is, jazz is one of the few things to let you know that there is a God and there is a creation.
Billy Higgins

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.
Bill Evans

The way that I got involved with microtonal music was, frankly, through jazz.
John Eaton

You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That's jazz.
Oscar Peterson

To most jazz critics I was basically Kenny G.
Herbie Mann

Well, actually, I don't consider myself a jazz legend or anything.
Joseph Jarman

I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician.
Dave Van Ronk

Jazz is not the format where I want to stay, but it really is a starting point for me.
Justin Guarini

Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitude that's in trouble. My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history.
August Wilson

I think you have to have a jazz pedigree to be on jazz radio.
Rita Coolidge

Growing up, I was very much interested in jazz music.
Jan Hammer

Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it.
John Corigliano

Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that.
Pat Metheny