Branford Marsalis Quotes

When you keep the caliber of musicians very high in the band, people are going to come and go. Some of them will be people who have to try various things, it's natural.

A good interpreter can take a piece of bad music and make it sound pretty decent, while a bad interpreter can take good music and make it sound cheap. I can tell that some people have a bad taste, and unlike on the piano, they smear around a lot, that is bad taste.

Ornette Coleman is a real musician. He takes all of the things he's thinking about in the world - which is a whole universe upon universe - and translates this into music.

As a songwriter, you tend to develop your own style, your own technique, based around what it is you're trying to write and perform, in terms of your own music. So a way of evolving a guitar style as a songwriter is much easier, I think, than developing a true style of your own just from listening to music or playing other people's music.

If you force yourself to write away from the piano, you come up with more inventive things. If you're too good a piano player, as some composers are, the music may become flavorless and glib. And if you're not a very good pianist, you're limited to the same patterns.

I don't think anybody really super-consciously tries to develop a style to play.

I get a lot of joy out of covering other people's songs, and, at my best, I think I bring something a little new to a lot of them.

I always look for the weirdest note to land on. I felt that that was the least I could do for the great musical traditions which I've spawned.

I love hearing the same songs over and over again - as long as queens challenge themselves to come up with new ways of performing them.

I love rearranging and reimagining tunes, so I want my audience to enjoy hearing songs in a new way and make their own discoveries.

There are artists who delight listeners with their wild and daring individuality; there are others who uncover the written score with reverence. There are few who can do both.

My hope is to continue to make new music and go with the flow. I think I'll always be creative. I want to keep making good music, put myself into positions where I need to rise to the occasion of playing in front of an audience, and continually get better at what I'm doing.

Music is the most important thing. I'm thinking of my future. There has to be something new, and I want to be part of it. I want to lead an orchestra with excellent musicians. I want to play music which draws pictures of the world and its space

I like to experiment when it comes to music.

With a band like Shenandoah, you don't want to take things and deconstruct them to a point where you don't recognize them.

Some people say that if you do anything other than a straight-ahead groove, that it's not jazz. But that kind of labeling is wrong. Music is what it is; if it sounds good, it sounds good.

I grew up playing the piano, but you know, as a rebellious child, I convinced myself that I hated it.

It's like, whenever I do any kind of cover, if it's a jazz piece or pop cover, I want to honor the original and make sure that the bulk and the juice of what makes that so great is there, but take it to a different place.

I love making music and I've always been doing that, I just didn't make it commercial.

I like the challenge of writing music without being the coolest guy or band in the room.

I've been writing songs since my teens.

When you say, 'Man, what kind of music does Outkast make?' You be like, 'They make Outkast music.' What kind of music does N.E.R.D. make? They make N.E.R.D. music. I want to be one of those people, because there's so many layers to the music I create that I don't want people to expect me to do one thing.

It's incredible how much beauty exists in the world of music and how many artists you can really inspire with your own work.

I want to speak in the tradition of rhythm and blues and soul music, but also push how it's dressed and how it's delivered to the audience. And hopefully that gets embraced by as many people as possible, but the goal isn't necessarily to speak to everyone. The goal is to get it out as exact as it is in my head.

Just by nature, we're always filled with so many ideas and want to cram as many ideas into a song as we can, and I think that gave us a lot of our signature sound.