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... The 'cleverness' syndrome has taken the place of melody. It's like everyone has come down with this terrible disease in jazz....you are always expected to do your own material, which is a strange thing to do if you're a poor composer but a great player.

Keith Jarrett

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Keith Jarrett
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: May 8
Composer
Jazz Musician
Musician
Pianist
Recording Artist
Saxophonist
Songwriter
Allentown
Pennsylvania
Like
Taken
Jazz
Poor
Material
Everyone
Musician
Syndromes
Place
Materials
Syndrome
Come
Disease
Cleverness
Great
Terrible
Composer
Thing
Strange
Melody
Always
Player
Expected

More quotes by Keith Jarrett

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I believe that a truly valuable artist must be an artist who realizes the impossibility of his task -and then continues to do it.
Keith Jarrett
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Silence is the potential from which music can arise.
Keith Jarrett
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Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms.
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I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.
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When you're up against an electric band like that, it's like you're on two separate planets.
Keith Jarrett
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Once we're inside a tune, we can do anything with it.
Keith Jarrett
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If I'm not a jazz player all the time, I've at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.
Keith Jarrett
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I am a romantic, I admit it.
Keith Jarrett
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I'm not talking ideas, or even presentation. It's like in politics: You have to sell something to become an electric player - like your skin or your heart.
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Creativity is what makes humanity move. We were created to participate.
Keith Jarrett
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You know, when people look at a tree, they look at the leaves they don't look at the spaces between the leaves. They're focused on the tree. I think there's an awareness of spaces or it wouldn't look like a tree to them.
Keith Jarrett
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Your own music comes out of your head and emotions, but it's not etched in your system.
Keith Jarrett
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Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there's no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.
Keith Jarrett
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Ideally, I'd like to be the eternal novice, for then only the surprises would be endless.
Keith Jarrett
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If music is sound & came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound.
Keith Jarrett
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The way I think about the practicing, it is my undercover work.
Keith Jarrett
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If you already have a piece of music ingrained in your body, why would you not play it?
Keith Jarrett
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When I joined the band I didn't know any of the tunes, and when I left the band I didn't know any of the tunes!
Keith Jarrett
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It is the individual voice, present to itself, that needs to be heard. We need to hear the process of the musician working on himself. We don't need to hear who is more clever with synthesizers. Our cleverness has created the world we live in, which in many ways, we're sorry about.
Keith Jarrett
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I've never heard anything Wynton [Marsalis] played sound like it meant anything at all. Wynton has no voice and no presence. His music sounds like a talented high-school trumpet player to me... he's jazzy the same way someone who drives a BMW is sporty.
Keith Jarrett