Someday, I hope to do a jazz club tour.
Fitzgerald coined the phrase the 'Jazz Age,' and now we're living in the Hip-Hop Age.
I think everybody has to kind of decide what the word 'jazz' means to them, and that's fine.
Once 'A.N.T. Farm' started, I was inspired by Chyna to jazz up my style. Now I paint my nails bright, fun colors and add a bunch of accessories and some cool shoes to jeans and a T-shirt.
Nobody would take me seriously. They would take one look at me and say, 'O.K., folk singer.' That was really hard for me, and I was angry a lot of the time. I did all these summer programs, and I never encountered another female playing jazz guitar. Ever.
I find as much inspiration from the forerunners of jazz as I do the modern-day innovators of jazz.
It's important that the art forms communicate, whether it's the dance program with the jazz program or the classical program with the opera program, that these conversations becomes fluid.
I always had this childhood image in the back of my mind of this fantastic place where all the things I liked came from; Orson Welles, jazz, all that stuff. Los Angeles is one of those places where somebodies become nobodies and nobodies become somebody.
In World War II, jazz absolutely was the music of freedom, and then in the Cold War, behind the Iron Curtain, same thing. It was all underground, but they needed the food of freedom that jazz offered.
I just don't know anything about jazz, really. I've never really listened to it, but I'd definitely like to discover more about it.
I did an instrumental jazz album. That was my first album.
Jazz is really 20th-century fusion music. You take West African harmony and rhythm, mix with European harmony, and boom!
I'm very influenced by jazz drummers. I always liked drummers like Roger Taylor, Keith Moon, Ian Paice, John Densmore. I just learned from playing to those drummers.
I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.
I began with dance, doing ballet at 3, then tap, jazz, modern. Then I sang in church choirs, learned how to play clarinet and drums, sang with rock bands and only then did I get into musical theatre.
People like Art Blakey and Buddy Rich, you look at them playing music, and it's just like looking at a heavy metal drummer. I mean, they're playing with the same amount of ferocity. It's not to say all jazz is like that.
The musicians in Chicago gave me my vocation, but New York calls to a jazz musician, for sure. You want to test your mettle.
Keith Moon is not interested in jazz and won't ever be a jazz drummer because he's more interested in looking good and being screamed at.
My dad listened to a load of jazz - Mahavishnu, Weather Report, Herbie Hancock.
Jazz is more raw than punk in a lot of ways. It's so expressive. A lot of people say to me, especially older people, 'It took me ages to get into jazz.'
Growing up, I listened and was influenced by a lot of those around me. I have a big family, and my dad listened to '80s music, my mom listened to Motown, my brother listened to reggae, and my granddad was the one that got me into jazz and swing music.
I wouldn't really say I'm a jazz guy, which I'm not.
You can't seperate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues - you can't seperate it. Because that's where it all started, and that's where it all come from - that's where I learned to keep rhythm - in church.
In 'Where the Air is Clear', Carlos Fuentes composed a polyphonic portrait of Mexico City amid the growth and modernization brought on by the economic boom of the 1950s. The novel can be read as a jazz interpretation - free and in a Mexican key - of John Dos Passos' 'Manhattan Transfer'.
Truth of the matter is, jazz is American music. And that doesn't mean bebop. Jazz is really about improvising. All the music that's been created in America has been pretty much improvised... Whether it's hillbilly or rock n' roll for blues, it's basically jazz music... It's basically about another way of hearing what comes out of America.
I've been a massive obsessive about jazz singers all my life.
I love most melodic music - classical, reggae, big band, jazz, blues, country, pop, swing, folk.
That's the thing about jazz: it's free flowing, it comes from your soul.
