Paul Bley famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

I think all record companies should be run by a musician. Just as you wouldn't trust your health to an electrician.
-- Paul Bley

#Music #Running #Thinking
Now as jazz musicians we're saying for this society, you can free up your imagination. You can proceed in an area without much information and you can function in an area without much information.
-- Paul Bley

#Music #Imagination #Information
Ornette Coleman wasn't sure whether he was going to continue with Charlie Haden-Charlie had some personal problems. I said "You've got to be kidding! There's no one on the globe who will be able to accompany you" and no one ever did. [Scott LaFaro] was playing atonally and certainly Ornette was not an atonal player. Jimmy Garrison was a tonal player. He wasn't even polytonal or atonal.
-- Paul Bley

#Music #Player #Able
I anticipated all the changes in jazz because they were all problematical things, that I was dealing with myself. In New York in the late '50s, there were a lot of experiments being made on how to avoid playing popular standards and how to get improvising out of those constricting formats.
-- Paul Bley

#Music #New York #Jazz
The Beatles came and everybody forgot about everything else. That was a friendly, together, hip interpersonal music, introducing electric sustain, and it captured the imagination of everybody. So improvising, even though it was in a very rich period in terms of impact on the public, the '6Os were very hard times on players financially.
-- Paul Bley

#Music #Player #Hard Times
I think we've all had enough of Coltrane saxophonists. There's a case of someone ruining a generation of saxophonists, as Louis Armstrong may have ruined a generation of trumpeters.
-- Paul Bley

#Thinking #Generations #May
Adam Berenson knows how to compose, organize an ensemble, do musical research, play solo and trio piano, write for musical journals, and enlist others to his cause. A very fine musician.
-- Paul Bley

#Writing #Play #Piano
When I arrived in New York I was definitely the worst player in town! It was just a measure of how far I had to go. It took years, while I was at Juilliard I worked different weekends with different people.
-- Paul Bley

#New York #Weekend #Player

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
I am the first instrument. I am the voice. I do not imitate other instruments. Other instruments imitate me.
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
By the time it came to the edge of the Forest, the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, â€œThere is no hurry. We shall get there some day.â€ But all the little streams higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late.
Rogue Squadron doesnâ€™t run. Unless we really, really have to." "No, this will be Wraith Squadronâ€™s mission." "We donâ€™t mind running. Even when we donâ€™t have to.
When the guy says go, you start to suffer - or you might as well not be out there. It's a small piece of your life, make it hurt.
Now I've even gotten to running out to the fan buses that pass by our house, so I can talk to the people. I think I'm trying to gather fans, frankly. They're very, very nice people - they really understand. It's fun talking to them.
I really hate it when I canâ€™t score runs from a ball.
Think it over, think it under.
Some of my academic friends think Ive fallen from a very special grace.

Paul Bley famous quotes

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