Dave Brubeck Quotes
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I played a lot of sports and it's the plays in basketball that weren't worked out that are the ones that are just fantastic that you remember. We don't know the power that's within our own bodies.
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Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.
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I don't think you can separate a person's "style" and his persona. If you're writing or improvising honestly, you will inevitably reflect who you are.
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Concord, California was a great place to grow up.
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The first choral music I remember hearing was Handel's 'Messiah' when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcast it over the radio.
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One of the reasons I believe in jazz is that the oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It’s the same anyplace in the world, that heartbeat. It’s the first thing you hear when you’re born — or before you’re born — and it’s the last thing you hear.
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Jazz is about freedom within discipline. Usually a dictatorship like in Russia and Germany will prevent jazz from being played because it just seemed to represent freedom, democracy and the United States.
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You could play probably a span of 50 years of me playing St. Louis Blues, and most of the time it will be different every time.
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I never wanted this kind of life that Im still living.
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I wanted to be like my father, who was a cattle man and a rodeo roper. And that was - he was my hero, and I wanted to be more like him.
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Every individual should be expressing themselves, whether a politician or a minister or a policeman.
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Damn it, when I'm bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic-take it or leave it.
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The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous.
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I’m beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.
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It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me. And also it's to me the greatest instrument. I shouldn't say that, but I believe that this is the only instrument I can really feel happy about playing.
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We don't know the power that's within our own bodies
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It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.
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The use of rock, folk, or pop music serves a purpose. It gets people into the church. But an inexperienced guitar player who doesn't have much to say, for example, can make me wish to leave the church immediately, whereas one great jazz or classical guitarist can confirm that I will have a spiritual experience in the church.
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What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.
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If I told you all the people that have secretly told me I've influenced them, you'd never believe it, and you'll never see it in print, either.
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Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact.
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Art may not have the power to change the course of history, but it can provide a perspective on historical events that needs to be heard, even if it's seldom heeded. After all the temporary influences that once directed the course of history have vanished, great art survives and continues to speak to each generation.
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Don't be a perfectionist... leave that to the classical musicians.
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I think the church should strive to give parishioners good music. Music is as necessary for worship as a building with a beautiful altar, artwork, and stained-glass windows. Together they create an environment conducive to worship and contemplation. We are not in church for entertainment, but to worship.
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There's a way of playing safe, there's a way of using tricks and there's the way I like to play which is dangerously where you're going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven't created before.
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My dad was the manager at the 45,000-acre ranch, but he owned his own 1,200-acre ranch, and I owned four cattle that he gave to me when I graduated from grammar school, from the eighth grade. And those cows multiplied, and he kept track of them for years for me. And that was my herd.
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Many people don't understand how disciplined you have to be to play jazz... And that is really the idea of democracy - freedom within the Constitution or discipline. You don't just get out there and do anything you want.
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Kinship doesn't come from skin color. It's in your soul and your mind.
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When I was 20, Shostakovich was my favorite composer. I still find his Fifth Symphony wonderful, with its outstanding themes and rhythms. That's the piece that made me want to be a classical composer.
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I got a poster from Columbia Records, and there's Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, Ellington, Count Basie - everybody in that poster has died, I'm the only one left. And great players like Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, it's hard to believe they're gone because we were all so close. But I believe in the future and the tradition will go on.
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