Lee Ritenour Quotes

At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music.

I think that people should learn about that. In most music, there's one way that you do something, and that's the only way. In jazz, it's a lot different.

As a matter of fact, we put it down because we wanted to be jazz pickers.

If I am playing any music at all it is jazz music.

In some ways, jazz is the most precise of art forms and the loosest in the sense that it's all about improvisation, but the musicianship required is kind of insane. To actually play with real jazz musicians is a different level of musicianship that almost has no equal in any other form of music in the world.

In essence, I feel I'm more jazz guitar player because I write vehicles geared for improvisation.

I was trained in jazz, which I love.

Jazz musicians have always taken the standards of their time and performed them with a jazz sensibility.

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.

The day of the great jazz improviser who doesn't know how to read music is over.

When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly.

Jazz was more of a tool for me to use to enhance my musicality.

Bud Powell's probably the biggest influence on my piano playing.

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.

Bernstein grew up in my building in New York. He's a very, very fine player. When he was a kid, he came by to find out what was going on in the world of jazz.

Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.

As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician.

If he's a true symphony artist, he knows better than that because he knows that the only truly creative musician is the jazz musician.

Coltrane would do what you'd get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians.

Bill Evans is a real serious jazz pianist who, in my book, crossed over boundaries in terms of color. He used the piano as his canvas.

What I believe to be jazz is constructed and improvised music which is in the air right now. But I don't think that's most people's definition of jazz, you know? We don't know what we're talking about, because we don't know the definition.

If it has more than three chords, it's jazz.

I haven't a great jazz band, and I don't want one.