Contemporary Jazz Quotes

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.

I've been a jazz artist playing pop and R&B my entire career.

I wanted to make a jazz record. I didn't want it to be a standards record.

Mimi Fox is one of the most exciting contemporary jazz guitarists I've heard.

People hear traditional jazz and think it's stale, where there are so many ways it can be opened up. With New Orleans and old-time grooves, there's no limit in what can be done with that. I want to break the stereotype of what traditional jazz is.

For the most part, 99 percent of jazz is boring; you've heard it before. People aren't doing anything creative that's extremely modern. They tend to always be like "Let's do a tribute to Miles Davis!" All the new albums are tributes to history. It becomes too much at a certain point, it leaves us waving like "Hello? I'm alive, I'm here!" You know? So I really do feel like it needs some spice, it needs to be relevant to today's times, today's people, today's sound.

When I was about 18, I really started diving into Dave Matthews Band and John Mayer Trio and some of those things that have jazz elements but also a pop feel.

I called the great French violinist Jean-Luc Ponty and I said 'So, who's the new cat? Who's got the stuff? And he said Zach Brock.

Ultimately, I think there's this umbrella term of jazz, and what's cool about not just what's happening with my music but this general sense of what's happening with this generation of musicians, is it's a very broad term, and we can incorporate all types of music, and we can be influenced and inspired by all kinds of sounds.

Neo soul, hip-hop jazz, we started that.

There is a modern take on certain things you can do that, to me, is still jazz.