Lester Bowie Quotations

We're just beginning to learn the importance of music in our society.

They always say that jazz doesn't sell, but it's a lie, because it does sell, and it sells consistently year in and year out.

You play ensemble things that you had no idea you were going to play two minutes before.

You know when I was younger I used to look at Downbeat Magazine and I figured anybody in Downbeat must be making a living.

You can establish a presence on the internet; you can have just as much of a presence as a major company or anyone else.

And there are a lot of people interested in creative music, there are more and more and more.

Many times you never know what's going to happen. You'll play songs that you never thought you were going to play.

The trumpet is forceful.

Jazz is so difficult. A lot of people think once they've learned these licks they can get up and play them for the rest of their life. But that's not being truthful to the music 'cause it's not developing. Cats you hear that don't make no mistakes? They ain't trying to do nothing. everything they hear is on the mark, but they've played it so many times... I've built a whole career out of making mistakes!

A chord is just the name of a sound.

A lot of jazz is like that; it sells over a period of time.

The music we play is kind of hard to explain. It's music that we really feel.

The way we look at it, everything is a sound.

These people are interested in a wide variety of music, and that's what we're into.

These record companies are going to be going out of business pretty soon, because people are just going to be downloading what they want to hear.

They were missing all the enthusiasm, the creativity; that whole excitement about the music was lost. A lot of people are really going back looking for that.

They're not just interested in one sort of music any more.

We expect the listener to have, like, a movie going on when they hear us. That's what it's all about for us.

We have the freedom to either play a tempo or not to play a tempo; to play a note or not to play a note; or to play what some people would say is a sound.

We just can't go and try to turn the clock back, that's not happening anymore. You've got to figure something else out.

What I've been trying to do for years is to get the music played on a station other than jazz stations, you know, to expand the audience.

You would think that anyone on a major label would be doing something, but when you speak of major label that means something to maybe a big pop star that might be getting some sort of benefit from the major. But we still don't get anything.

Because I believe that the future of the music lies in the Internet. It can be sold on the Internet.

Because people really got tired, too, of the same old formatted sort of thing, and the same old formatted music.

I'm only involved really right now with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Brass Fantasy.

It's just about really being sensitive, and trying to play a music that is about music.

Jazz groups have to make a living any way.

I always tell my students when you're going to be a jazz musician the first thing you've got to do is be a professional musician, and that means you have to feed yourself with the instrument.

Play as well as you can all the time, and if you're truthful to your thing, you'll succeed.

Music is very important. It's important as a tool for learning, it can be a tool for healing, it can be no telling what, as long as we remain free to be able to create the music, to be able to experiment and to really research, and to really get time to develop the music.

Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life.