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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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Jon Gordon
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: January 20
Businessperson
Consultant
Writer
Two
Blessed
Around
Worked
Able
Paper
Always
Office
Months
Exception
Pretty
Pushing
Law
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Living
Somehow

More quotes by Jon Gordon

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I was commuting three to four hours a day, I had jobs for much of it. But I was always involved in going to some ensemble someplace. Taking my lessons at the local Jewish community center on Staten Island.
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.
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Sometimes you think Okay, well I'm going to play my horn, and I'm going to study Charlie Bird Parker solos or [John Coltrain] or whatever. But as [Phil Wood] said to me, Man, Bird listened to everything.
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Remember, you have only one ride through life so give it all you got and enjoy the ride.
Jon Gordon
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Letting people share their gifts and strengths is real love.
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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Connection to the music and the history was very powerful to me. I think that's what I feel the most blessed about.
Jon Gordon
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Hearing Phil [wood] a lot, those few years especially when I was going to hear music and Tom Harrell was in the band. Man that was incredible. Hearing Tom at that period, and hearing Phil in that period, and also [Charles] McPherson. Those three guys were very impactful. Very inspiring to me at the time.
Jon Gordon
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Being positive won’t guarantee you’ll succeed. But being negative will guarantee you won’t.
Jon Gordon
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We listened [with my mother] to [Frank] Sinatra and Glen Campbell and we had some Beatles records that I liked. This was in the '70s.
Jon Gordon
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[Phil wood] put on some [Igor] Stravinsky and say to follow the score, tell me to play me the opening to the Rite of Spring. Or, I'm going to play you some 20th century obscure classical composer you don't know. Or, Let's listen to some Charles Ives, let's sight read some Bartok violin duets, etc.
Jon Gordon
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Everyone wants to do what the great ones do but very few are willing to do what they did to become great
Jon Gordon
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When I heard Charlie Parker the first time on a record, it had seemed like an old, scratchy kind of record and I didn't get it.
Jon Gordon
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I was also sitting in from the middle of senior year of high school at Sweet Basil, it was a great club in New York.
Jon Gordon
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You're not going to have any pension or health care from those $60 nights at you name the club. But I think you do this because you have to do it. You pursue any art form because you need it. Because you love it.
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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Great leaders don't succeed because they are great. They succeed because they bring out the greatness in others.
Jon Gordon
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I'm reaching a certain level [at school] that I had been aspiring to with all these incredibly advanced classical peers around me that I had been trying to be able to hang with them a little bit.
Jon Gordon
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Instead of being disappointed about where you are, be optimistic about where you are going.
Jon Gordon
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Walk down Forest Ave to Joey's Pizza like we used to do after performances, which doesn't exist anymore. We had a sense of community [in the school band].
Jon Gordon