Gerry Mulligan Quotes (34 Quotes)

In a way, I started out to be a baritone player.

Yes you know, some years I do a lot of dates and a world tour with the big band and then the next year we'll probably only do a handful of dates.

People are approaching electronic levels in music; although not all of it happens to tickle my fancy.

So I played alto for quite a while until I saved up the money for the baritone.

And the other thing we do we periodically have softball games with the band, because they're all baseball nuts that helps to keep the spirit alive.

Now, the instrumentation in the jazz band and the jazz dance band has gone through many evolutions. For instance, in the 'twenties the tradition was two or three saxophones.

Actually, when I was very young, first starting to play, I think I probably listened more to clarinet players than to saxophones.

The Russian composers, especially, tricked the symphony orchestra into the kind of dynamic, rhythmic thing.

The recording industry has changed; they're enjoying such incredible success in the pop field.

You can make a saxophone into an electric organ; you can do everything with it.

The baritone can serve functions that the alto and tenor cannot, in orchestral voicing.

You start way down on a low B flat on the tuba and you have a chromatic scale; you can match the colours all the way up, till you get to the top of the trumpet.

This life of being a transient human being has gotten to a point when it's very hard to bear.

Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.

I've appeared on some other people's albums.

It's true I've always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

Eliminating the piano means that I've always worked closer with the bass than most players.

When I began listening to saxophones, I was first attracted to Coleman Hawkins.

I would think, of all the saxophones, the baritone would be the most logical instrument if anybody was adding a voice to the symphony orchestra.

I've always wanted a C trumpet on top, to have that same kind of facility without shouting.

People talk about innovations and evolutions and that kind of thing; I don't understand about that nonsense. It's like, all instruments are there to use all the time.

If you've only got one horn playing, I still want the sense of ensemble.

Actually, it is a fact that I've been doing more writing than playing in recent years.

New York is still where I live most of the time.

Then, of course, I played alto and tenor, wherever there were jobs.

When we've finished the current tour I'm going to go back to Italy and see if I can do some more writing.

But it's been kind of a sequence of events you know those sorts of things you meet people and things happen, without thinking about it.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

I'm fascinated with the electronic devices that we can mess around with.

I like what I hear other guys doing, but the thing that really attracts me is melodic playing.

In fact, I heard Bird first, and had got well into listening to him. You know, it's the kind of accidental thing that awareness of a player is: what's available, what somebody happens to play for you.

The other saxophones, except as solo instruments, really don't have much point in the orchestra.

Because if you've got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.

The first reason for starting to do the symphony concerts was to play this new piece of mine.