Guess quote

Branford Marsalis [1960-0] American

Rank: 102
Musician, Saxophonist

Branford Marsalis is an American saxophonist, composer and bandleader. While primarily known for his work in jazz as the leader of the Branford Marsalis Quartet, he also performs frequently as a soloist with classical ensembles and has led the group Buckshot LeFonque.

Quote	Tags	Rank
If I were like a lot of other people, then it wouldn't be fun; but since I'm like me, it's okay.		101
The whole point is, give me a break with the standards. You go to the average jazz label and suggest a record and they want to know which standards you're going to play. I'm saying let's break the formula.		102
I think that if you keep banging at the door all you need is a little foothold, a little tiny foothold, and then the rest will take care of itself.		103
Pop doesn't really look back. It can't. What makes pop work is simplicity.		104
What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.		105
If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold.		106
Humans are imperfect. That's one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We're on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.		107
The piano is the X factor. People have a tough time following the structures when there's no piano there, spelling it out. It makes it more easily understood, particularly to people who don't know as much about music.		108
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.		109
The lion's share of what I hear right now are people who, intentional or accidental, have avoided all jazz prior to 1960. And all the musicians who were successful in the '60s spent their entire lives, prior to 1960, listening to all the musicians these people avoid.		110
The biggest problem with American music right now, is that kids don't listen. They come by it honestly, Americans don't listen anyway. When people go to concerts, they say I'm going to see... not, I'm going to hear.		111
If it's not going to sound like Terrapin Station, what's the point of playing Terrapin Station?		112
That's kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You're out there predicting the future, and no one believes you.		113
Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.		114
One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.		115
There's not one Tin Pan Alley song on my record.		116
It's something that jazz has gotten away from, and it's unfortunate. Players aren't physical anymore.		117
My dad was a musician, it was just what he did, like another guy's dad drives a meat truck. Our house was normal. We weren't taken with the fact our dad was a musician.		118
I'm not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.		119
There's a certain kind of motion and pacing that our music has, and this just doesn't have that. We just kind of rushed to the conclusion of most of the songs. I just would've preferred to done them over.		120
A lot of musicians have a tough time hearing what we're doing in a trio format.		121
You hear it in your brain. Whatever makes sense. Some songs work well as quartet songs, sometimes they don't.		122
When you're dealing with music without words, titles are more a means of identification than anything else. What's the point of getting lofty?		123
Jazz fans love Miles and I love him for a myriad of reasons, but the overviews are always too simplistic.		124
We played it as long as we could play it on that CD and I think it might be 50 minutes, maybe. What you have to do is play a couple of songs and then get off the stage because everything that trails it sounds stupid.		125
I suspect that we might actually start selling some records with these artists in about 10 years. Some the people who invested, they're a little tight-because it's a lot of money to start up a company.		126
I think that one of the problems that jazz has is that it's so incestuous that it's starting to kill itself.		201
One of the things that's clear to me from interviews that I've read is that the more popular successful jazz musicians had audiences above and beyond the music community.		202
I gave up my base in popular culture when I left the Tonight Show.		203
It's hard to get into Newsweek because, as more of our former intellectual magazines take on a pop focus, if there's no buzz, there's no interest.		204
I like to make records sound good. I'm more like a reducer than a producer. If an artist cannot produce themselves, what's the point?		205

The script ran 0.002 seconds.