My first Grammy wasn’t even in a jazz category, but of course I was really excited. ‘Rockit’ was the beginning of kind of a new era for the whole hip-hop movement. – Herbie Hancock
It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself. – Herbie Hancock
When somebody uses a word as a genre distinction, all it really does is trigger certain experiences, or music, that somebody’s been exposed to. But that’s an individual thing; there’s no sort of universal understanding of what jazz is. – Gerald Clayton
I’m asked so many times why I think there aren’t more female instrumentalists in jazz. But I never think about it. And I don’t think it’s been any harder for me to be taken seriously. The music speaks for itself. – Hiromi Uehara
I always used to say I’m definitely not a straight-ahead jazz singer, because then there’s people who would hear what I do and say, ‘Is it jazz? I don’t know…’ Whatever it is, it really comes down to creating music that makes people feel something. – Gretchen Parlato
I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn’t want to become a writer – it just happened. – Haruki Murakami
I grew up listening to everything. You know, from Argentinean folk music, tango, jazz, rock, just everything. – Gustavo Santaolalla
It’s not easy to play in a framework that requires simplicity and to tastefully find ways to interject the kind of freedom that we have in playing jazz. – Herbie Hancock
It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most. – Harry Connick, Jr.
It’s true I’ve always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way. – Gerry Mulligan
My secret dream has always been to be a jazz musician. I tried the saxophone for a year or two when I was younger, but unfortunately I had to face the fact that I was not really talented! – Gaspard Ulliel
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. – Gretchen Parlato
One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people were doing. – Herbie Hancock
I kept on buying records and listening to them. Finally, I was able to hear the relationship between the jazz improvisers’ solos and the underlying structure that it’s based on, the chord progression. That was pretty easy to do in the swing era, y’know, when jazz was, like, pop music, you know. It had made the charts and everything like that. – Harvey Pekar
I looked back on the roaring Twenties, with its jazz, ‘Great Gatsby’ and the pre-Code films as a party I had somehow managed to miss. – Hugh Hefner
My folks have played everything from rock, disco, pop, funk, and blues. My dad has always brought and played different genres like jazz, classical, and Latin. With all this in my pocket, I feel I have a taste of everything for my influences. – Haley Reinhart
At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music. – Herbie Hancock
Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music. – Herbie Hancock
