One thing you learn: if you want to reveal yourself, you also have to know where to stop.
Once we’re inside a tune, we can do anything with it.
Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there’s no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.
I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.
If you already have a piece of music ingrained in your body, why would you not play it?
We really never know what we’re gonna play when we get on stage.
I don’t like recording studios – except my own, which is just a little room above the garage.
When you’re on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn’t exactly a sound – it’s a hum, like the streets.
I’m my own most merciless critic onstage.
Your own music comes out of your head and emotions, but it’s not etched in your system.
The way I think about the practicing, it is my undercover work.
Keith Jarrett