Duke

p. 167

"Here I am fifty years later, still getting cats to come out of bed, so that I can listen to them."

p. 168

"If you took the time to study the construction of fifty or so of Ellington's tracks... you would see over and over the composer's unique skill in conveying a sense of uninhinited party on the surface level but underpinning it with sober calculation in the music's inner workings."

p. 170 

"Goodman was a perfectionist who was rarely pleased with the musicians he hired, and they burnt out on his intensity, many leaving the band after only a short stint. Ellington's orchestra thrived, in contrast, because the boss didn't demand perfection, and instead built everything in the ensemble's repertoire on the demonstrated strengths of hsi personnel."

Intentionality

p. 15

"When a group is working together effectively, the individual musicians don't need to play so many notes... when the band's rhythmic cohesion is floundering, each individual in the group is tempted to overplay... lots of activity is no substitute for skilled cohesion."

p. 25

"Phrases move effortlessly from one type of subdivision of the beat into another. In my own musical education, the moment of success came when I found I could play rhythmic patterns in the music that I could no longer analyze in real time."

p. 26

"Above all, I like to hear a clear sense of intentionality in a musician's phrasing... After I have heard a phrase played with intentionality, I feel as if it is absolutely the only combination of notes that would have fit the circumstances."

"Dizzy Gillespie once claimed that the first thing that came to his mind when improvising was the rhythmic structure of the line... lesser horn players seem to end their phrases when they run out of breath."

p. 27

"it isn't a matter of loudness or energy, but rather a sense of clear intention and personal agency embodied in the melodic lines."

"(When stealing from other players... choose a different instrument from your own, and people won't notice the theft)"

p. 28

"The best way to open up your ears to phrasing is by listening to the top tier jazz vocalists."

Dynamics

p. 38

"musicians often find it difficult to agree on a change from loud to soft, or vice versa, unless they are listening closely to each other and are intimately in sync, the result is often long stretches without much dynamic variation."

p. 39

"Jazz is a hot art form. It thrives on intensity... as a result, louder is almost always the easier option on the bandstand, especially for inexperienced performers."

"Audiences burn out on unrelenting volume"

https://youtu.be/6BD8-aYrKew

p. 43

"I have so much faith in this essential translucency of music that I trust the songs more than biographical facts."

p. 48

"When one of his band members succeeded in playing an especially exciting solo that generated lots of applause from the audience, Mingus would yell at him: "Don't do that again!""

p. 49

"Jazz... is for those who want to be in attendance when the miracle happens."