“ Nothing is real beyond imaginative patterns men make of reality.”

William Blake

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“ …the larger world lay not across oceans but within the human mind and heart.”

Greg Iles, “The Quiet Game”

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“Many are spoil’d by that pedantic throng,

Who with great pains teach youth to reason wrong.

Tutors, like Virtuoso’s, oft inclin’d

By strange transfusion to improve the mind,

Draw off the sense we have, to pour in new;

Which yet, with all their skill, they ne’er could do.“

William Pope’s “Essay on Criticism,” 1711

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“Everybody’s been playing free. Every time you play a solo you’re free to play what you want to play. That’s freedom right there.“

Philly Joe Jones’s comment concerning so-called ‘freedom music.

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“If success is measured by acknowledgement, that means you have to go public, and to the extent that you go public you distance yourself from the intimate aspect of your own life. One day you wake up and you realize that this whole aspect of your life has been lost, and you finally understand the cost of what you’ve done.”

From a character in the novel “The Dossier.”

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“…it is essential that the study of the history of jazz should include those aspects that are apparently ‘extra musical’ such as sociologic, economic and psychological contexts that are in fact pertinent to the language and tend to condition its substance. One of these is participation. Jazz still relies on the participatory relationship between audience and musician that dates back to it’s African origins. Right from the outset, in Afro -American music ,the audience has been pressed to consider itself as an integral part of the performance experience.”

From Stefano Zenni in the year 2000 publication of Musica Oggi

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“When we learn something new, we produce a new thought or make a new connection-we change. We are someone different.”

The Turing Option, Harry Harrison & Marvin Minsky

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“It would seem to make sense that every aspiring musician should at some point play drums in order to get a rhythmic clue. Jazz, with it’s time feel derived from poly rhythmic African music, demands that its practitioners of what Mike calls “additive rhythm;” i.e. 2 against 3, 4 against 3, 5 against 4 etc. Once a musician is made aware of these relationships via the drum, major changes take place in their playing. Not only do their their lines begin to flow better and swing, but it becomes impossible for the player to fall out of time.”

From and interview with Mike Longo in Jazz Improv Magazine, Vol. #1, 2000.

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Surely you heard the story about the cellist Pablo Casals going mountain climbing with a music lover. About half way up a boulder came down the mountain and barely missed Casals’ right hand. “Good God, Maestro, that was a close call! If that boulder had hit your hand your career might have been over!” Casals shot back, “Yeah, and then I wouldn’t have to play that goddam cello any more.”

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“The first night in the band, playing with the great Dizzy Gillespie, I was all over the place with notes. And he just eased over to me and calmly said, “You know, the sign of a mature musician is when you learn what not to play; what to leave out.’ It took me a while to do.

Dizzy loved to teach; he was a natural born teacher. I learned a lot of little things that you wouldn’t get in a music school. The things he would show me, you’d have to practice on the gig. That’s probably what they mean when they say, on-the-job training. I don’t think you could get the full essence of some of the things he showed me by just practicing at home.”

From a Junior Mance interview in January 2002 issue of Allegro Magazine.

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