In the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra we play such a diversity of music, with 10 arrangers in the band, we don't really worry about whether it's contemporary or not.
All the folks I play with come from jazz backgrounds or at least appreciate spontaneity within the parameters of a pop song.
I think you have to have a jazz pedigree to be on jazz radio.
I don't think that jazz, as any kind of an art form, has any permanence attached to it, apart from the practitioners of it.
For years, Jazz At The Philharmonic albums were the only ones of their kind.
I do all the classics, like Dylan, Kristofferson, Jimmy Reed, Mexican mariachi songs, some jazz songs from the '30s. Cole Porter's 'Begin the Beguine,' that's one of my favorites.
In 1962 I wrote for 'Jazz News,' using the pseudonym Manfred Manne, which I picked because of a jazz drummer with that name. I later dropped the 'e.'
I was working with the computer at university and playing jazz in the daytime, buying west-coast psychedelic and early Kraftwerk records in the afternoon, and playing folk at night. I was quite busy!
I've played with jazz and toyed with it when I used to live near the St. Nicholas Pub in Harlem.
And over the last ten years, after my work with the Brodsky Quartet, I had the opportunity to write arrangements for chamber group, chamber orchestra, jazz orchestra, symphony orchestra even.
I've been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet.
I have a very varied taste in music. Everything from rap to classical to Latino to Rat Pack to jazz.
I love good rock'n'roll, blues and jazz, gospel, and a little reggae.
In blues, classical and jazz, you get more revered with age.
We were either listening to jazz or Robert Johnson, the old blues man, but not to our peers.
I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.
I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician.
Jazz was the pop music of its day, and all American popular music has stemmed from it one way or another.
Guitars, there was rock 'n' roll. Saxophone, jazz. Now we have the computer and there's this electronic thing happening in music that is somewhat superhuman.
I believe in dressing for the occasion. There's a time for sweater, sneakers and Levis and a time for the full-dress jazz.