The piano is the X factor. People have a tough time following the structures when there’s no piano there, spelling it out. It makes it more easily understood, particularly to people who don’t know as much about music.
BRANFORD MARSALISWhat you have to do is play a couple of songs and then get off the stage because everything that trails it sounds stupid.
More Branford Marsalis Quotes
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I like to make records sound good. I’m more like a reducer than a producer. If an artist cannot produce themselves, what’s the point?
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When people go to concerts, they say I’m going to see… not, I’m going to hear.
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So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.
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You hear it in your brain. Whatever makes sense. Some songs work well as quartet songs, sometimes they don’t.
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If it’s not going to sound like Terrapin Station, what’s the point of playing Terrapin Station?
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When you’re dealing with music without words, titles are more a means of identification than anything else. What’s the point of getting lofty?
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his special ability enables Walter to communicate with aspiring musicians in a way that removes the sense of mystery that sometimes enshrouds our profession.
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One of the things that’s clear to me from interviews that I’ve read is that the more popular successful jazz musicians had audiences above and beyond the music community.
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Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.
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I don’t care who likes it or buys it. Because if you use that criterion, Mozart would have never written Don Giovanni, Charlie Parker never would have played anything but swing music. There comes a point at which you have to stand up and say, this is what I have to do.
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I think that if you keep banging at the door all you need is a little foothold, a little tiny foothold, and then the rest will take care of itself.
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What is jazz? It, It’s almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It’s a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.
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One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.
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What you have to do is play a couple of songs and then get off the stage because everything that trails it sounds stupid.
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You don’t know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything.
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