I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.
As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be some jazz.
Jazz music is America's past and its potential, summed up and sanctified and accessible to anybody who learns to listen to, feel, and understand it. The music can connect us to our earlier selves and to our better selves-to-come. It can remind us of where we fit on the time line of human achievement, an ultimate value of art.
Certainly one of the more common experiences in the jazz field is discovering someone new. Improvising musicians are capable of being musical travelers, voyagers. We want to join in on whatever we hear. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape.
Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures.
Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.
Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.
I don't think I've ever been true to jazz. There's always a kind of jazz element to what I do. There are a very few genres that I haven't tried out, really, in what I've been doing. As a jazz musician, you can kind of mess about with things with a certain level of musicianship, which helps.
Jazz radio is not very friendly to pop singers who decide to make a jazz record. But a lot of people have been. A lot of the people I've talked to like the record.
I don't think that jazz, as any kind of an art form, has any permanence attached to it, apart from the practitioners of it.