Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ken Burns
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: July 29
Actor
Cinematographer
Film Director
Film Producer
Manufacturer
Producer
Screenwriter
Brooklyn
New York
Kenneth Lauren Burns
Kenneth L. Burns
Kenneth Burns
Important
Jazz
Century
Simply
Quite
American
Armstrong
Persons
Einstein
Music
Louis
Person
Physics

More quotes by Ken Burns

Image
Civics is in fact politics, and politics is how things work not only in the political realm but in every other realm. It may be this simple mechanical glitch that unites everything. This is my philosophy.
Ken Burns
Image
It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past
Ken Burns
Image
When you are editing, the final master is Aristotle and his poetics. You might have a terrific episode, but if people are falling out because there are just too many elements in it, you have to begin to get rid of things.
Ken Burns
Image
I have made all my films for my children with the exception of my first film because my oldest daughter wasn't born when I was making the film about the Brooklyn Bridge.
Ken Burns
Image
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
Image
Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.
Ken Burns
Image
The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts.
Ken Burns
Image
I can understand why some of these drummers and bass players become cult figures with all of their equipment and the incredible amount of technique they have. But there's very little that I think satisfies you intellectually or emotionally.
Ken Burns
Image
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
Image
A jazz beat is a dynamic changing rhythm.
Ken Burns
Image
The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could spend 50 hours on the last 25 years of jazz and still not do it justice.
Ken Burns
Image
History's just been made for sale to an inside deal.
Ken Burns
Image
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
Image
I'm a filmmaker. I'm an artist. I've chosen to work in history the way someone might choose to work in still lifes or landscapes.
Ken Burns
Image
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
Image
I grew up certain for a while that I was going to be an anthropologist, until film turned my head.
Ken Burns
Image
People tend to forget that the word history contains the word story.
Ken Burns
Image
We strain to listen to the ghosts and echoes of our inexpressibly wise past, and we have an obligation to maintain these places, to provide these sanctuaries, so that people may be in the presence of forces larger than those of the moment.
Ken Burns
Image
By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.
Ken Burns
Image
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