I think it is in collaboration that the nature of art is revealed.
Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo.
Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it.
Bamboo is not a weed, it's a flowering plant. Bamboo is a magnificent plant.
Risk is at the heart of jazz. Every note we play is a risk.
When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly.
You have to sound sad first of all, then maybe later you can sound good.
If you listen to Louis Armstrong from 1929, you will never hear anything better than that really, and you will never hear anything more free than that.
The soprano turned out to sound to me like the right hand on the piano.
Play difficult and interesting things. If you play boring things, you risk losing your appetite. Saxophone can be tedious with too much of the same.
Before the work comes to you, you have to invent work.
To me, there is spirit in a reed. It's a living thing, a weed, really, and it does contain spirit of a sort. It's really an ancient vibration.
It starts with a single sound. If there's something in that sound, then it's worth continuing.
I was spoiled by Monk's music because it was so good, so complete.
Circumstances can be very important. Find the right people to work with.
Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.
People don't want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately, and this is one of the biggest problems in the world.
There is an awful lot of what I call recreational jazz going on, where people go out and learn a particular language or style and become real sharks on somebody else's language.
What I learned with Cecil Taylor was strategy and survival and how to resist temptations and resist getting discouraged.
Nobody was playing the soprano saxophone and certainly nobody was trying to do anything with it. So I was all alone. I didn't know that at first.
