When people go to concerts, they say I’m going to see… not, I’m going to hear.
BRANFORD MARSALISThe whole point is, give me a break with the standards. You go to the average jazz label and suggest a record and they want to know which standards you’re going to play. I’m saying let’s break the formula.
More Branford Marsalis Quotes
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I’m not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.
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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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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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The way to learn the language is to rip off other players. As Benny Golson told me, “We all start off sounding like other cats.
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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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It’s hard to get into Newsweek because, as more of our former intellectual magazines take on a pop focus, if there’s no buzz, there’s no interest.
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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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My dad was a musician, it was just what he did, like another guy’s dad drives a meat truck. Our house was normal. We weren’t taken with the fact our dad was a musician.
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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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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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Walter Beasley is an anomaly: a successful performing musician who possesses the rare skill of understanding the musical process beyond the intuitive. T
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Humans are imperfect. That’s one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We’re on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.
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Everybody talks about finding your voice. Do your homework and your voice will find you.
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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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So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.
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