Lee Konitz's Quotes

Labels don't mean anything to me. I'm trying to play as passionately as I'm able to. If they want to call that cool, that's fine. Just spell the name right, is the formula.

You just keep playing. If someone special comes along and organizes it in a new way, then you'll have another approach and everybody will jump on it to try to learn.

A first love always occupies a special place.

A lot of bands were doing remotes from ballrooms around the country.

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be some jazz.

Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet.

I always felt as a horn player, a jam session wasn't satisfying enough for me. I should have been a rhythm section player, actually.

I have been able to get a small audience. It's not the huge audience, but it's enough to make it possible to play. I appreciate that.

I hear many extra-musical things somehow in Coltrane.

I listen to classical music very much. There's a lot of jazz that I don't enjoy listening to.

I love Indian music very much, but I haven't studied that specifically.

I understood that if I wanted to work, the saxophone was the main instrument. The clarinet was what we call a double.

I wish that person outside would stop coughing.

I'd like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I've heard.

In some ways Lester Young is the most complex rhythmically of any musician. He does some things which are just phenomenal.

It was 100 percent music. There was no ego involved, no attitudes, no black and white, it was pure music.

It's very demanding to make up your own music.

Many people do think it's naive to improvise in front of paying customers. I'm not saying one way is better than another.

Most jazz players work out their solos, at least to the extent that they have a very specific vocabulary.

Names and theoretical things don't occur to me. If they do, I'm not doing my real playing mode.

Out of Coltrane's whole history, there are things which I think are great from all the periods.

Sound is the first thing that we tune into.

We all learn from each other, and I never really hung out with guys in that way, so I missed out.