Quote

It's very unlikely you're a genius, but, if you're ready to work at it hard and you want to listen to music all the time and you want to learn about it and you want to be around the people who do it, you'll find your own way.

Jon Gordon

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Jon Gordon
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: January 20
Businessperson
Consultant
Writer
People
Learn
Around
Music
Find
Hard
Unlikely
Work
Genius
Way
Listen
Time
Ready

More quotes by 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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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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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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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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[Manhattan School Of Music] didn't' have a jazz undergraduate program at the time so I played a semester in the big band. There was a graduate program. But I wasn't really that involved in jazz yet.
Jon Gordon
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Positivity is like a boomerang. The more we put it out there, the more it comes back to us.
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
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We were poor [with my mother], and we didn't have too much. So we sat on the floor and we had a record player, and that's all we had in that room in the apartment. But we had whatever we had. Six records and a record player and it seemed like magic. Seven or eight years old, you know.
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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Negative people often tend to create negative cultures whereas positive corporate cultures are created by positive people.
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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Ernie Hayes, Jimmy Lewis, and either Belton Evans or Khalil Mahdi on drums [were in Sweet Basil]. All those guys really took care of me.
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
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I feel very similarly. I didn't have necessarily the same exact kind of dynamic, but that means a lot when people are like that with you. Especially people like that. And I think [Phil Wood] felt a certain responsibility .
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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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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Many of the people I'm gratified to see have gotten acclaim like Mark Turner or Bill Charlap. Ed Simon or Maria Schneider or Jim McNeely or Scott Robinson. Ken Peplowski, who is a friend and somebody I admire a lot.
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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When you believe, the impossible becomes possible. What you believe will become what is true. Your optimism today will determine your level of success tomorrow. Don’t look at your challenges look up and look out into the future. Don’t focus on your circumstances. Focus on the right beliefs that will help you build your success.
Jon Gordon
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Life and success are about what you choose to believe.
Jon Gordon