Ahmad Jamal Quotes

American jazz pianist (1930-2023)

Add quote

Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones, July 2, 1930 – April 16, 2023) was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, and educator. For six decades, he was one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz. He was a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Master and received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy for his contribution to music history.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Birth Name: Frederick Russell Jones

From Wikidata (CC0)

Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.

I listened to music from Tatum and Erroll Garner to Mozart. I've composed since I was 10 years old – I used to do 20% my own pieces and 80% other people's; now it's turned the other way. After a certain time you discover the Mozart in you, the Duke Ellington or Billy Strayhorn in you. It takes time to discover yourself. You also have to find and keep players who are in tune with what you're doing; you have that empathy, the quality of breathing together.

I'm still evolving, whenever I sit down at the piano [...] I still come up with some fresh ideas.

I once heard Ben Webster playing his heart out on a ballad [...] All of a sudden he stopped. I asked him, "Why did you stop, Ben?" He said, "I forgot the lyrics." That's what Nat (King) Cole was talking about, "You have learn to live with a song."

If you're applying for credit and write that you’re an insurance salesman, or a member of the Chicago Symphony, you won't have trouble. But just write "jazz musician" and you can't even buy a sofa on credit.

[On maintaining high levels of energy into old age] It's a divine gift, that's all I can tell you [...] We don't create, we discover – and the process of discovery gives you energy

All my inspiration today," he [Miles Davis] asserts "comes from Ahmad Jamal, the Chicago pianist. I got the idea for this treatment of 'Autumn Leaves' from him.

I was playing Liszt's Eroica etudes when I was 11 . . . though I can't play it now." (Jamal reflects on this with a laugh.) "It all made me eventually settle on calling this great music 'American classical music' instead of jazz. It's the only art form that developed in the United States except for American Indian art. It managed to survive because it's so strong and so natural and so pure.

A guy that knows all these electronic things may be great [...] but a guy who knows acoustic and electronic is better. Just like a guy who knows Mozart only may be great, but a guy who knows Mozart and Duke Ellington is better. And a guy who knows Mozart and Brahms and Ellington is even better . . . It's musical depth perception.