A jazz musician is a combination orator, dialectician, mathematician, athlete, entertainer, poet, singer, dancer, diplomat, educator, student, comedian, artist, seducer, public masturbator, and general all-round good fellow.
Steve LacyRead
Risk is at the heart of jazz. Every note we play is a risk.
Interpretation
Jazz music embodies the idea of taking risks, where each note represents an opportunity for creativity and expression.
This quote by Steve Lacy highlights the improvisational nature of jazz music, where musicians must embrace the uncertainty of each note they choose to play. In jazz, the element of risk is essential to the art form, as it allows for innovation and the creation of unique musical experiences that can only arise when artists venture beyond the safe and predictable.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of creativity in the arts.
A jazz musician is a combination orator, dialectician, mathematician, athlete, entertainer, poet, singer, dancer, diplomat, educator, student, comedian, artist, seducer, public masturbator, and general all-round good fellow.
Play difficult and interesting things. If you play boring things, you risk losing your appetite. Saxophone can be tedious with too much of the same.
A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.
The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he must make others see. Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things. A picture is first of all a product of the imagination of the artist; it must never be a copy. If then two or three natural accents can be added, obviously no harm is done. The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe.
I decided very early that I wanted to write. But I didn't think of it as a career. I didn't even think of it as a profession... It was the most exciting thing, the most powerful thing, the most wonderful thing to do with my life.
There are people who've enjoyed my work in the theater, and they let me know that it was special for them. I'm not going to say, 'Well, you should have seen me as Gandalf!'
Music sets up certain vibration which unquestionably results in a physical reaction. Eventually the proper vibration for every person will be found and utilized.
Out of my entire annual output of songs, perhaps two, or at the most three, came as a result of inspiration. We can never rely on inspiration. When we most want it, it does not come.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.