As a jazz musician, you have individual power to create the sound. You also have a responsibility to function in the context of other people who have that power also.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.
In my view a jazz musician is a great musician.
Jazz is a hard music, and you have to really work hard and also have fun performing; that's the most important thing.
Jazz is letting everybody do his or her thing with the music.
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.
The guitar for me is a translation device. It's not a goal. And in some ways, jazz isn't a destination for me. For me, jazz is a vehicle that takes you to the true destination - a musical one that describes all kinds of stuff about the human condition and the way music works.
Jazz is a way of life, and you have to learn about it on the street, so to speak. But the training comes in by giving you the tools to work with.
Through improvisation, jazz teaches you about yourself. And through swing, it teaches you that other people are individuals too. It teaches you how to coordinate with them.
Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that.
Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.