Everything I do is collaborative. It's just my way. I'm really very interested in how the other musicians perceive the song.

I'm always imagining some sort of story behind the song, even the ones I haven't written. I'm actively engaging in playacting.

My father had all kinds of instruments in the house that he would hide from my mother. He bought them through mail order!

There was a train that would come by our house every night, and I'd hear the whistle blow. That is the sweetest memory I have.

Miles Davis was doing something inherently African, something that has to do with all forms of American music, not just jazz.

I'm always looking for ways to develop as an artist, especially as a jazz artist-to find different ways of testing my voice.

I've often cringed when I heard myself described as a jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a jazz vocalist.

My grandmother sang, too, and she was really loud. It was this wild kind of singing. I count her among my influences.

Everything I do is collaborative. It's just my way. I'm really very interested in how the other musicians perceive the song.

Miles Davis was a master. In every phase of his career, he understood that this music was a tribute to the African muse.

Being black, I'm involved in the reparations movement. It's focused toward the African-American audience. We could begin to heal.

I was never interested in singing in the church choir or in school. I was more interested in becoming a musician.

That's Tommy, this great producer who comes in contact with people and must have a mental library of personnel who are great for this and great for that, and he brought this whole group of musicians to the project that I'd never worked with before.

Every musical movement that is big enough has to produce some good musicians who wouldn't have had the incentive to start playing without it.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

When we started making electronic music I imagined that the reaction we got from the rock musicians must have been similar to the one the beat groups got from people like my dad.

We were brash young fellows'. I was always hanging with the older crowd anyway. The musicians were the Hip Cats, and I was hanging with them anyway. I Just started out real early.

You can have all sorts of relationships, but there's something with musicians working together where you can have relationship that can just continue to grow in a beautiful way.

Most musicians count at the beginning, and never count and talk to their musicians after that. They only talk to them at the end of the song. But I would count with them and talk.

It's my fault in many cases because I don't initiate the contact to talk with a lot of other musicians.

Musician jokes are a kind of joke that usually have to do with how much money someone makes. Musicians are always starving, so they're really mean to each other about who makes what.

What 'jazz' means to me is the worst kind of working conditions, the worst in cultural prejudice. The term 'jazz' has come to mean the abuse and exploitation of black musicians.

We wanted to guide the musicians, so we could create our own sound. We would never let the band just go in and play the chord sheets. We were very focused on what we had in mind for these productions.

I don't take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.

I'm always going to get more of a charge playing Chicago than I will Duluth or some place like that. Just because of the history and the people there are way more knowledgeable than a lot of other cities. It's an amazing music scene with some great bands and great musicians.

Watch MTV and you can see what the music scene is like in England. The Spice Girls? Not a lot of creativity in the commercial area. There are still great musicians in England, but not a lot being heard that much.

Success breeds volume, and it's just amazing how many young writers, artists, and musicians there are in town.

At the art college in Edinburgh someone arranged for some London groups to come up and play. I was in a supporting band, with Bernie Green I think. Derek Bailey was one of the visiting musicians. He seemed to like my playing and asked me to come down to London.

Out of doing all that experimentation with sound I decided I wanted to do it with live musicians. To take repetition, take music fragments and make it live. Musicians would be able to play it and create this kind of abstract fabric of sound.

But, I would be naive not to recognize the number of musicians who tell me they have been influenced by me and sight me - as well as Alex and Neil - as a musician who has been a positive influence on their playing.

We're not spokespeople, we're musicians.

I was afraid the other musicians might want to present themselves too much, though I see in the coverage I've received of the album that the musicians got wonderful reviews for their contributions and abilities. I think the four musicians played freely within my limits.

I only choose musicians who I think will emerge, can emerge, with their own character, while still going along with the tune in question.

If you're going to use standards as criteria for signing musicians, you can sign thousands. If you're going to use some sort of conceptual interpretation that's based on the tradition of those standards, but is trying to move away from it, you're down to about 10 people or so.

What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don't think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact.

Rock musicians, and a vast array of popular-music musicians, due to their wealth, acquired through the mass of their notoriety, are able to be listened to and heard and thus are able to effect change on an international level.

Not with the Rochester Philharmonic, but I formed my own orchestra, made up of musicians from the Eastman School, where I'm on the faculty now, direct the Jazz Ensemble and teach improvisation classes.

It might be argued that genuine spontaneity is not really possible or desirable so long as printed scores of great works exist. All modern musicians are, for better or worse, prisoners of Gutenberg.

Like most musicians, I'm good at becoming immersed in the music that I am currently working on. We seldom lift up our heads to contemplate even the music we will be doing in the future, let alone what we've done in the past.

My training as an engineer has enabled me to design the stuff, but the reason I do it is not to make music but for the opportunity to work with musicians.

You know, musicians aren't very stable, in case you hadn't noticed.

The musicians recommend that I sing a sing the way it is written the first time and then start to look for other notes that aren't in the melody.

Those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties, with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

When it comes to musicians, I'm like the daddy of musicians here in Cuba.

I think it was that we were really seasoned musicians. We had serious roots that spanned different cultures, obviously the blues.

On Eye of the Zombie, I had so-called studio musicians.

When you keep the caliber of musicians very high in the band, people are going to come and go. Some of them will be people who have to try various things, it's natural.