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If you are complaining you can't be thinking about or creating what you do want.

Jon Gordon

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Jon Gordon
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: January 20
Businessperson
Consultant
Writer
Complaining
Creating
Thinking

More quotes by Jon Gordon

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If I could have picked two guys on the planet, to have some exposure to at that age, those were the two right guys [Phil Woods and Charles McPherson].
Jon Gordon
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I had a great year with Bob Mintzer [at Laguardia School of Arts]. Bob is great. We could have just brought the clarinet or dealt with classical stuff, or brought the flute or just dealt with comp and arranging... what a great teacher.
Jon Gordon
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All we can do is go about our work. But we can have a goal. We can have a dream.
Jon Gordon
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I think we're in a time and place, the last 20 plus years, and certainly now, it's only more so, where it's just about us creating a body of work. Creating hopefully our own scene.
Jon Gordon
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Pretty fortunate that with the exception of two months when I was 23, that I worked in a law office pushing paper around. I was always able to eke out a living somehow. So I'm blessed.
Jon Gordon
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I saw a nice interview with Dave Binney recently. He was saying, Man it was never easy. It's not like 'Oh wow, the good old days.' What, when certain people couldn't vote? There was more work for musicians in the '40s, '50s, '60s. But I don't think it was ever easy.
Jon Gordon
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[Manhattan School Of Music] were kind of just getting the jazz program up and going when I first started there. I was 17 in September of 1984 when I started there.
Jon Gordon
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I would sit in at a jazz brunch [at sweet Basil] with Eddie Chamblee, who was a great tenor player. Really a kind man. The whole band was great.
Jon Gordon
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Earlier that year [1996], Ronnie Scott came to Visiones when I was playing with Maria and he hired me to come and play in his club in London, which I was gratified by. That allowed me to make some more connections.
Jon Gordon
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We had a great educator [in the school band], a man named Larry Laurenzano. He was tough, but we knew that he loved us. And that was the beginning of playing music with people and really being inspired and having fun and being in a community.
Jon Gordon
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I was really falling in love with jazz and dedicating myself in that direction.
Jon Gordon
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Phil [Wood] was known for having a little bit of a gruff manner, but he was all heart.
Jon Gordon
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If you go with that spirit, good things will come for you. If you go into it with an assumption that you're a genius and that you're entitled to something, it's a little tougher.
Jon Gordon
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There's a lot of good people out here that want to help you grow and to help the music to continue to grow and evolve and go find those folks and be around them and carry it on... carrying the tradition on in the way with what it is that you have to offer. Find some good people in the music that will believe in you and they'll help you do that.
Jon Gordon
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When [Charlie Parker] saw the young guys, especially the ones that were scuffling... Did you eat today? And if you hadn't eaten, he'd take you and buy you some lunch.
Jon Gordon
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I was [ on Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition] with Ralph Bowen, and Joel Frahm, Jimmy Greene, John Ellis. You can't play the saxophone better than any of those guys play. So many of those things that those guys could do I wish I could do now, let alone then.
Jon Gordon
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Larry [ Laurenzano] said to me one day near the end of junior high, Jon, are you Jewish? I said, No. And he said, Well neither am I. I'm not sure of Caesar DiMauro, but he teaches at the JCC and I got you a scholarship there.
Jon Gordon
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Phil [Wood] said to me in the car going back, he said, Look man, you better know why you're playing this music. Because I've known too many who lived and died for it. And if you're not trying to change the world, I'm not interested.
Jon Gordon
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It's a complicated story [hoe I got into music ]. I actually wrote a book about it, titled For Sue.
Jon Gordon
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No challenge can stop you if you have the courage to keep moving forward in the face of your greatest fears and biggest challenges. Be courageous.
Jon Gordon