Lester Bowie Quotes

Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life.

The way we look at it, everything is a sound.

Play as well as you can all the time, and if you're truthful to your thing, you'll succeed.

We're just beginning to learn the importance of music in our society.

Many times you never know what's going to happen. You'll play songs that you never thought you were going to play.

I always tell my students when you're going to be a jazz musician the first thing you've got to do is be a professional musician, and that means you have to feed yourself with the instrument.

These people are interested in a wide variety of music, and that's what we're into.

You play ensemble things that you had no idea you were going to play two minutes before.

Jazz groups have to make a living any way.

A lot of jazz is like that; it sells over a period of time.

And there are a lot of people interested in creative music, there are more and more and more.

Because I believe that the future of the music lies in the Internet. It can be sold on the Internet.

Because people really got tired, too, of the same old formatted sort of thing, and the same old formatted music.

I'm only involved really right now with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Brass Fantasy.

What I've been trying to do for years is to get the music played on a station other than jazz stations, you know, to expand the audience.

You can establish a presence on the internet; you can have just as much of a presence as a major company or anyone else.

The trumpet is forceful.

We have the freedom to either play a tempo or not to play a tempo; to play a note or not to play a note; or to play what some people would say is a sound.

They're not just interested in one sort of music any more.

They were missing all the enthusiasm, the creativity; that whole excitement about the music was lost. A lot of people are really going back looking for that.

These record companies are going to be going out of business pretty soon, because people are just going to be downloading what they want to hear.

They always say that jazz doesn't sell, but it's a lie, because it does sell, and it sells consistently year in and year out.

You know when I was younger I used to look at Downbeat Magazine and I figured anybody in Downbeat must be making a living.

We expect the listener to have, like, a movie going on when they hear us. That's what it's all about for us.

It's just about really being sensitive, and trying to play a music that is about music.

The music we play is kind of hard to explain. It's music that we really feel.

We just can't go and try to turn the clock back, that's not happening anymore. You've got to figure something else out.

A chord is just the name of a sound.