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Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.

Sonny Rollins

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Sonny Rollins
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: September 7
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Saxophonist
Harlem
New York
Theodore Walter Rollins
Things
Absorb
Jazz
Musical
Type
Stills
Still
Music
Many

More quotes by Sonny Rollins

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...this is my dilemma. I'm a guy who makes things up as I go along, so nothing is ever finished - there are so many layers. So when you solo, yeah, you might get into one thing, but then, hey, everything has implications! You can hear the next level. And that's how I feel about improvising - there's always another level.
Sonny Rollins
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Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.
Sonny Rollins
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There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.
Sonny Rollins
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Jazz is an endless source of ideas, because you can use anything. You can play operatic arias. You can incorporate them into jazz. You can play gypsy music and incorporate it into jazz. You can European classical and you can incorporate it into jazz. You can use anything and jazz it up, as they used to say.
Sonny Rollins
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I think what we need is a more welcoming mode from the people who put on a hundred million country-western shows on television. How about a monthly jazz show?
Sonny Rollins
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I'll know when I find the ultimate sound.
Sonny Rollins
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I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.
Sonny Rollins
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I am a person who thinks about the music first in trying to achieve something musically valid.
Sonny Rollins
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Jazz never ends... it just continues.
Sonny Rollins
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I'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not.
Sonny Rollins
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There was a period which I refer to as the 'Golden Age of Jazz,' which sort of encompasses the middle Thirties through the Sixties, we had a lot of great innovators, all creating things which will last the world for a long, long time.
Sonny Rollins
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You had many jazz musicians who lived in the United States, who had a hard time being accepted over here and had to play in sort of these inferior type dives.
Sonny Rollins
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I am interested in my music lasting only while I'm alive. I'm not writing for the future.
Sonny Rollins
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I've played with all of the heavyweights in the modern jazz, progressive jazz movement. I've been fortunate enough to play with them, a who's who. All of those guys, I've been fortunate enough to have performed with.
Sonny Rollins
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I feel that I have an obligation to jazz and also to myself to play as good as I can play.
Sonny Rollins
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Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.
Sonny Rollins
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I'm fortunate that I'm making a living at it now because I'm not equipped to do anything else.
Sonny Rollins
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Charlie Parker stuck out in my mind.
Sonny Rollins
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I enjoy playing clubs. I still enjoy the closeness of the nightclub venue. However, after a certain period of time and after playing around some of the clubs in New YorkI felt that jazz should be presented in a more prestigious atmosphere.
Sonny Rollins
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It's all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. These peaks will come again.
Sonny Rollins