David Sanborn

Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized and there's just no outlet, there's no venue for it, in terms of media.

I tend to play in a way that feels natural to me. To me that's authentic for myself. I play by where I'm led by some sense of where I feel I'm supposed to be.

In most of the stuff that I've done over the years as a sideman, I wasn't really a session musician, because to me, a session musician is a guy who makes his living in the studio, and I never really did that.

I think 'Horace Silver' was actually the first live jazz group I ever heard back when I was a kid in St. Louis. So along with most players of my generation, I have a real affection for the music of 'Horace Silver.'

When I make records, I never listen to stuff after it's done. Ever.

You're only as good as your last record.

In regard to music, I just think that it's always best to have an attitude of being a perpetual student and always look to learn something new about music, because there's always something new to learn.

To me, the object of practicing is to allow you to play what you hear. But you're always hearing new things, so you never get to the end of it.

When you have an acoustic bass in the ensemble it really changes the dynamic of the record because it kind of forces everybody to play with a greater degree of sensitivity and nuance because it just has a different kind of tone and spectrum than the electric bass.

When you're on stage, unless you surrender to the moment, you're not telling the truth. I look for people that tell me the truth.

I look at the artistic process as like experiencing the world, channeling it through your personality and sending it back out there. That's the process.

Its all about finding the right note at the right place and knowing when to leave well enough alone. And that's a lifelong quest.

My drummer, Gene Lake, is Oliver Lake's son. So I certainly have wide tastes, in not only what I listen to, but what I play as well.

While St. Louis is technically regarded as part of the Mid-West, it's actually - geographically and emotionally - more part of the South. I mean, the sensibility of St. Louis is really very much that of a Southern Mississippi river-town.

I have pretty ecumenical tastes. I'm interested in a lot of different kinds of music, so I don't listen with a jaundiced ear to music because it's in a certain category, whether it's country or opera or hip-hop or bebop or whatever it is.

Music is like an open sky. You know it's out there... and there you are.

Everyone goes through the ups and downs of living - fretting about the future, worrying about what happened. Music teaches us how to be in the moment.

I think that that's the way the music grows and changes and becomes new and creative and vital. It's by synthesizing elements from all around it and not to maintain this kind of rigid myopic kind of tunnel vision, in a sense, trying to maintain a certain kind of purity, or whatever.

Music is just kind of an expression of who I am. It's what I do.

I became a musician because I love music, and that is what has sustained me; it's not because I thought it was a great way to make a living. Music saved my life.

In regard to music, I just think that it's always best to have an attitude of being a perpetual student and always look to learn something new about music, because there's always something new to learn. Don't dismiss something out of hand because you think it's either beneath you or outside of the realm of where your interests lie.

As a melody instrument player, it's all about getting from one note to the next, and those intervals and how you navigate your way through these vertical structures of chords. You realize that everything's moving forward, and it's all linear.

Jazz music should be inclusive. Smooth jazz to me rules out a certain kind of drama and a certain tension that I think all music needs. Especially jazz music, since improvising is one of the cornerstones of what jazz is. And when you smooth it out, you take all the drama out of it.

Ninety-nine percent of the music that was of any interest to me when I was growing up came out of the black community.

I always wanna be in the process of evolving and growing.

Jazz music by its very nature is just a conglomerate of a lot of different kinds of music.

Well, I guess my unease with that is... I'm always a little uneasy with that phrase - smooth jazz, as opposed to what?