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I'm very gratified that I had my little 15 minutes,or whatever [at the Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition]. It certainly didn't make me rich and famous. But it helped a little bit for a while.

Jon Gordon

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Jon Gordon
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: January 20
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More quotes by 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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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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I wasn't expecting [the Monk competition] would necessarily do that. So I just did what I did and some good things continued to happen and some doors continued to open and that kind of led me into the different associations that I developed in my 30s and some records that I've made on ArtistShare over the last 10 years or so.
Jon Gordon
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Letting people share their gifts and strengths is real love.
Jon Gordon
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Bob [Gordon] died young tragically.
Jon Gordon
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The goal is not to be better than anyone else but rather be better than you were yesterday.
Jon Gordon
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There were some things I was going and doing in Europe a little bit. Some festivals that brought me over. That was good. Some touring I did over there. But there was nothing major [from 22 to 29].
Jon Gordon
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Negative thoughts are the nails that build a prison of failure.
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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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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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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You hear about the struggles with substances and all that, but [Phil Wood] was a really a great guy. This was a great man.
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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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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You need to work as hard to be a great teammate as you do to be a great player
Jon Gordon
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When I was 13, 14, 15, I had played in a couple of jazz ensembles. I didn't know anything about harmony, about II-V-I, though I had learned my scales with Caesar [DiMauro].
Jon Gordon
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I took some comp for non-comp major classes with Giacomo Bracali and Ludmila Ulela, who was a really famous composition teacher.
Jon Gordon
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When I was a kid, I always saw these pictures of a man called Bob Gordon with a baritone saxophone, who I understood was my father. Turns out he wasn't. He was my mother's first husband.
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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You can’t be a great leader if all you are serving is yourself.
Jon Gordon