Dave Brubeck Quotes
Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.
Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact.
Damn it, when I'm bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic-take it or leave it.
I'm always hoping for the nights that are inspired where you almost have an out of body experience
Every individual should be expressing themselves, whether a politician or a minister or a policeman.
And there is a time where you can be beyond yourself. You can be better than your technique. You can be better than most of your usual ideas. And this is a whole other category that you can get into.
Probably the most profound thing in the Bible is 'Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.' This is what, to me, is the essence of Christianity.
I’m beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.
Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music!
I wanted to be like my father, who was a cattle man and a rodeo roper. And that was - he was my hero, and I wanted to be more like him.
The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous.
It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me. And also it's to me the greatest instrument. I shouldn't say that, but I believe that this is the only instrument I can really feel happy about playing.
The first choral music I remember hearing was Handel's 'Messiah' when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcast it over the radio.
My own Brubeck Institute in California is turning out fantastic young jazz players, and I know great things will happen.
I knew I wanted to write on religious themes when I was a GI in World War II. I saw and experienced so much violence that I thought I could express my outrage best with music.
Most of the international acceptance of jazz education can be traced to the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, and the wonderful program they inaugurated.
I used to take my mother to Yosemite. When I turned 14, I got my driver's license, and that's where she'd want to go, so I'd go take her there for two weeks.
When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection. Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I can hear that in their music.
My mother Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck was a pianist who studied with Dame Myra Hess and Tobias Matthey. As a child in California I used to listen to her play Chopin.
If there's a deadline, I work late. If not, I like to have normal hours, and get up early and work. When things are going well, I hate to quit. And then I'll work 'till exhausted.
You could play probably a span of 50 years of me playing St. Louis Blues, and most of the time it will be different every time.
If I told you all the people that have secretly told me I've influenced them, you'd never believe it, and you'll never see it in print, either.
I played a lot of sports and it's the plays in basketball that weren't worked out that are the ones that are just fantastic that you remember. We don't know the power that's within our own bodies.
Your mother’s heartbeat is the first sound you ever hear and your own heartbeat is the last.
When I was first aware that I couldn't read music I didn't know I couldn't read because I could play the music that was in front of me.
What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.
I don't think you can separate a person's "style" and his persona. If you're writing or improvising honestly, you will inevitably reflect who you are.
