Ensemble Playing Quotes

I don't regard myself as a soloist. It's a color; I put it in for excitement. It's not great loss if a solo has to go. We've made songs without solos.

I mean, in the course of an evening, people will take a solo here and there, but generally it's all about the rhythm of that music. Dealing with the rhythm with everything. That's essentially at least my concept of what that group is.

For me, great jazz records really feel like everyone in the room is playing together in a zone - and all the musicians are completely in sync with each other.

I see myself as a composer who plays music and likes to play with other people, and not just as a solo artist.

To have someone play off and be with a band is more pleasurable.

It's easy to put on a Deep Purple record and say, 'That sounds great.' But why? Part of it is individual practice, but by playing together, a talent of meshing happens.

It's great to have all this stuff at home. But when you want to make it for real, there's still nothing like making music with a bunch of other great musicians in the same room. That's one thing that'll never change.

If you're playing with a number of people, there are all sorts of textures, all kinds of possibilities you can get into. So why just play a theme together and then take solos?

And if you are playing in several meters at once, there has to be a - not a rigid - but there definitely has to be a reference to a common pulse in the band.

The quality of instruction is very high at the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. It's not about being a rock star. It's about the fundamentals of music, theory and technique on a particular instrument, and playing in an ensemble or private setting.

I have worked alone and with a cast and enjoy the process both ways. There is more back-and-forth with a full cast, and you can feed off the other actors' performance.

Nothing surpasses my performances with small bands, especially with Charlie Parker. A small band doesn't forestall creativity.

When I first wrote for orchestra, I didn't realize, when you have 20 people playing a violin line, that is very different than one person playing that line.

When you're used to playing with people, when you're in a band, then you're used to playing with each other. People nowadays aren't used to playing with each other because they don't have to.

I never envisioned myself as a solo artist; I was always part of a band.

As an improviser I'm now pretty comfortable with trios, so I'm thinking of working up to quartets.

We have two different ways of working. One is completely unstructured where somebody just starts playing and somebody joins in and then the other person joins in, and something starts to happen. That's occasionally what happens. What more often happens is that we settle on some sort of - a few sort of structural ideas, like, "Okay, when I put my finger up, we're all going to move to the extremes of our instruments. So, that means you can only play either very high or very low or both. And we're going to stay there until I take my finger down.

I've never been able to sit round on my own and play drums, practice in the back room, never been able to. I've always played with other musicians. It's how I play, there's no joy for me in playing on my own, bashing away. I need a bass, a piano, guitar, whatever, and then I can play.

When you have an acoustic bass in the ensemble it really changes the dynamic of the record because it kind of forces everybody to play with a greater degree of sensitivity and nuance because it just has a different kind of tone and spectrum than the electric bass.

When I play, I stare at the left hand of whoever is playing lead. And I get to know what people are playing well enough that when they start going somewhere, once they arrive, I'm already there.

I love being in a band. I love playing with other human beings. I've never practiced drums unless there was another human being in the room.

The group-effort sound in recording of 'Sea Lion' is like, you really hear all the people in the room and hear them interlocking. There's a real freight-train energy of all these people at the same time playing.

I like being in the back. I've done that for so many years, I'm really comfortable doing it. I don't like the solo thing as much as I like playing drums behind someone.

The whole period has taught me that I enjoy being part of an ensemble rather than just a front man. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy that too, but I get more enjoyment out of really listening to everyone.

I approach everything as chamber music. Even with Beethoven symphonies, I lead from the violin and basically encourage the orchestra to think of it as a giant string quartet.