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The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts.
Ken Burns
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Ken Burns
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: July 29
Actor
Cinematographer
Film Director
Film Producer
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Producer
Screenwriter
Brooklyn
New York
Kenneth Lauren Burns
Kenneth L. Burns
Kenneth Burns
Country
Improvisation
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Arts
Jazz
Genius
Art
Music
More quotes by Ken Burns
I am passionately interested in understanding how my country works. And if you want to know about this thing called the United States of America you have to know about the Civil War.
Ken Burns
There are no ordinary lives.
Ken Burns
I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films.
Ken Burns
Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.
Ken Burns
I think the problem with a lot of the fusion music is that its extremely predictable, its a rock rhythm and the solos all play the same stuff and they play it over and over again and theres a certain musical virtuosity involved in it.
Ken Burns
In a sense I've made the same film over and over again. In all of them I've asked, 'Who are we as Americans?
Ken Burns
You don't work on something for six years and be blind to the myriad of other approaches.
Ken Burns
Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.
Ken Burns
I grew up certain for a while that I was going to be an anthropologist, until film turned my head.
Ken Burns
History isn't really about the past - settling old scores. It's about defining the present and who we are.
Ken Burns
Do something that will last and be beautiful. It doesn't have to be a bridge-or a symphony or book or a business. It could be the look in the eye of a child you raise or a simple garden you tend. Do something that will last and be beautiful.
Ken Burns
I don't think that there has been a film that I've done that hasn't been influenced by libraries and archives.
Ken Burns
Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.
Ken Burns
We all think that an exception is going to be made in our case and were going to live forever. Being a human is actually arriving at the understanding that thats not going to be. Story is there to remind us that its just OK.
Ken Burns
Wynton told us that Miles sold out, just wanted to make more money, just wanted to sell more records. I don't believe that Miles sold out but I'm not in a position to say.
Ken Burns
A jazz beat is a dynamic changing rhythm.
Ken Burns
I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the content.
Ken Burns
It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past
Ken Burns
I wake the dead. I bring Jackie Robinson and the Roosevelts to life. Who do you think Im trying to wake up?
Ken Burns
I never, ever want to apologize for a film. If it's bad I'll say it's my fault. And that's what I can say so far in all the films that I've done, that if you don't like it, it's entirely my fault.
Ken Burns
