Keith Jarrett Quotes

The way I think about the practicing, it is my undercover work.

If you already have a piece of music ingrained in your body, why would you not play it?

If music is sound & came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound.

Creativity is what makes humanity move. We were created to participate.

I cannot say what I think is right about Music. I only know the rightness of it.

Ideally, I'd like to be the eternal novice, for then only the surprises would be endless.

I believe that a truly valuable artist must be an artist who realizes the impossibility of his task -and then continues to do it.

One thing you learn: if you want to reveal yourself, you also have to know where to stop.

Silence is the potential from which music can arise.

Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms.

If a person plays dissonance long enough, it will sound like consonance. It's a language that was alien and then it's less and less alien as it continues to live.

Wynton Marsalis is jazzy the same way someone who drives a BMW is sporty.

Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there's no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.

When you're up against an electric band like that, it's like you're on two separate planets.

I can't even tolerate my own playing on electric keyboards. It's not about the musical ideas - the sound itself is toxic. It's like eating plastic broccoli.

Your own music comes out of your head and emotions, but it's not etched in your system.

When you're on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn't exactly a sound - it's a hum, like the streets.

I'm my own most merciless critic onstage.

I'm not talking ideas, or even presentation. It's like in politics: You have to sell something to become an electric player - like your skin or your heart.

I actually get a metallic taste in my mouth when I think about electric music.

Musicians are always gigging and never have a chance to stop for a minute.

Once we're inside a tune, we can do anything with it.

I am a romantic, I admit it.

I think you have to be completely merciless with yourself.

I don't like recording studios - except my own, which is just a little room above the garage.

When I joined the band I didn't know any of the tunes, and when I left the band I didn't know any of the tunes!

I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.

I realized that improvisers should probably always have time off. But musicians are always gigging and never have a chance to stop for a minute - unless something drastic occurs.

If I'm not a jazz player all the time, I've at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.