These saxophone quotes will inspire you. Saxophone, a member of a family of metal wind instruments with a single-reed mouthpiece, is used especially in jazz and dance music.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging saxophone quotes, saxophone sayings, and saxophone proverbs.
Best Saxophone Quotes
- “The sax solo as we know it today would not exist without Gerry Rafferty. His 1978 soft-rock classic ‘Baker Street’ has to be the ‘Ulysses’ of rock & roll saxophone, giving the entire chorus over to Raphael Ravenscroft’s sax solo, creating one of the Seventies’ most enduringly creepy sounds.” ~ Rob Sheffield
- “I get stoned, I can’t get home, I’m calling long distance on a public saxophone. My head is achin’, my back is breakin’, feel I got run over by Captain Coconut and his dog named Rover.” ~ Jimi Hendrix
- “I play saxophone, I play tenor sax.” ~ Andy Serkis
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“You can make a saxophone into an electric organ; you can do everything with it” ~ Gerry Mulligan
- “I try not to talk during the day when I have a show that night. My voice is my instrument, just like a saxophonist’s instrument is his saxophone, plus also his voice, if he’s the one between tunes that makes announcements.” ~ Emo Philips
- “I like to hear melodies that go from one extreme to the next- saxophone to a bell to a whistle, for instance.” ~ Roscoe Mitchell
- “When I was young, I never bought records because my brother Joseph played saxophone and had a record player. I loved listening to his records: The Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, all the big American jazz bands, and vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Ernestine Anderson, and Kitty White, a singer from the US who was a friend of Nina Simone. Nobody in America seems to know about her, but she was quite popular in South Africa.” ~ Miriam Makeba
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“I like what Oliver Lakes does on the saxophone. The saxophone comes pretty close to the sound of the human voice and when Oliver plays with other sax players, it’s like a dialogue.” ~ Yusef Komunyakaa
- “Eventually as a teenager, I was pulled up on stage by James Brown’s saxophone player, Maceo Parker, during one of his concerts and scatted on his stage for 20 minutes. After I was done, Maceo’s bass player got down on one knee as if he were proposing, took a string off of his bass guitar and coiled it up around my ring finger. He hushed the crowd and said into the microphone, “Wendy, from this day forward you are married to music. You have a gift from God. You must devote your life to using this gift or else you will deprive the world of something so special.” I got the chills.” ~ Wendy Starland , Saxophone quotes player
- “I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God because God didn’t resolve. But that was before any of this happened.” ~ Donald Miller
- “I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone.” ~ Steve Lacy
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“My world was a community ballet school, a marching band, my two sisters and my girlfriends. I played saxophone in the band and was a bit nerdy.” ~ Jennifer Garner
- “I play drums, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, french horn, piano.” ~ Norman Wisdom
- “Melodies can be good depending on the context. You can have a simple melody, and if the harmony behind it is interesting, it can make a very simple melody really different. You can also have a complex melody. The more complex it is, the harder it is to sing, and then sometimes it can sound contrived. You could write a melody that would be fine on a saxophone but if you give it to a singer, it can sound raunchy.” ~ Donald Fagen
- “The drum is the heart of music. The saxophone can play and then rest, as can all of them except the drums; the drummer keeps going – he can’t afford to stop.” ~ Jo Jones
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“I always hated jazz guitar. I loved jazz saxophone but I hated jazz guitar. If I would buy an organ trio record I would make sure I’d buy one that did not have a guitar player on it. The sound was awful!” ~ Tom Verlaine
- “When somebody turned me on to a Coltrane record around seventh grade, I took up saxophone.” ~ Tom Verlaine
- “And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I’m going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I’m going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.” ~ David Bowie
- “I remember once, when I started writing for the alto saxophone, a saxophonist told me to think of it as being like a cross between an oboe and a viola, but louder.” ~ Gavin Bryars
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“I played saxophone and trumpet. Pretty nerdy.” ~ Kesha
- “Play difficult and interesting things. If you play boring things, you risk losing your appetite. Saxophone can be tedious with too much of the same.” ~ Steve Lacy
- “Playboys’ was an authentic junkie record. Art Pepper was just out of jail, Chet was arrested a week after the session, and piano player Carl Perkins would die two years later. When the record was recorded I was behind bars myself. In 1955 I was caught with narcotics and had to serve almost five years. Luckily, I was allowed to keep my saxophone in the cell, and I composed a lot during the time. They had to come fetch the music for Playboys from jail.” ~ Jimmy Heath
- “Switch to piano! No. Really, if you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it’s like the human voice. Of course, it would be best if you could actually sing with your own voice. The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. Therefore, the challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument or ‘voice’ that is outside of your body. I love that challenge and have for over forty-five years. As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.” ~ Stan Getz
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“The worst waste of breath, next to playing a saxophone, is advising a son” ~ Kin Hubbard
- “I practiced saxophone eight hours a day for the first two years I played.” ~ Stan Getz
- “Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.” ~ Charlie Parker
- “If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it’s like the human voice.” ~ Stan Getz
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“That’s the beautiful thing about the saxophone. It can peacefully coexist with just about anything – whether it’s hip-hop, rap, rock music, pop, R&B or jazz, there’s a place for the saxophone in all of those styles.” ~ Dave Koz
- “The saxophone is so human. Its tendency is to be rowdy, edgy, talk too loud, bump into people, say the wrong words at the wrong time, but then, you take a breath all the way from the center of the earth and blow. All that heartache is forgiven. All that love we humans carry makes a sweet, deep sound and we fly a little.” ~ Joy Harjo
- “Making a painting is like playing the saxophone. You hit the note and it comes out.” ~ Julian Schnabel
- “The potential for the saxophone is unlimited.” ~ Steve Lacy
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“I wanted to play saxophone, but all I could get were a few squeaks.” ~ Stevie Ray Vaughan
- “The saxophone was created to mimic the human voice and I think that’s why I gravitated toward the saxophone eventually. I’d loved the clarinet, but there’s something about the saxophone that just grabs you.” ~ Matana Roberts
- “Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.” ~ Steve Lacy
- “The saxophone is the embodied spirit of beer.” ~ Arnold Bennett
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“You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others.” ~ Steve Lacy
- “The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception. All you can do is play melody. No matter how complicated it gets, it’s still a melody.” ~ Stan Getz
- “I don’t know why, but I like the saxophone.” ~ Matt Dillon
- “I started realizing that music is the one area where I’ve always let go. When that saxophone goes into my mouth, I get into a space where I never think about the notes I’ve already played or anticipate the notes ahead.” ~ Kenny G
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“The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.” ~ Stan Getz
- “As a horn player, the greatest compliment one can get is when a person comes to you and says, ‘I heard this saxophone on the radio the other day and I knew it was you. I don’t know the song, but I know it was you on sax.'” ~ Clarence Clemons
- “I wanted an electric train for Christmas but I got the saxophone instead.” ~ Clarence Clemons
- “Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen.” ~ Carl Sandburg
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“I practice my saxophone three hours a day. I’m not saying I’m particularly special, but if you do something three hours a day for forty years, you get pretty good at it.” ~ Kenny G
- “There’s so much music out there & so many possibilities. I like anyone who plays any instrument.” ~ Bill Frisell
- “When I got this saxophone, it became a religion. There wasn’t TV, there wasn’t much money, and there was just a real dedication…. I never thought of it as an art. It was just work that I loved. Not just work, but work that I loved. I loved it so much, I would play it if nobody listened to it. Any jazz musician, if there’s nobody around to listen, would play just for the sheer joy of improvising music.” ~ Stan Getz
- “So I’m looking to the saxophone as a resource which has its own unique set of possibilities. I’m looking to exploit them and develop them and have the fullest range of possibilities of the saxophone be known.” ~ Evan Parker
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“You know, when I’m playing, I think of myself in front of the Wailing Wall with a saxophone in my hands, and I’m davening, I’m really telling it to the Wall.” ~ Stan Getz
- “I am a saxophone player.” ~ Nick Offerman
- “If all else fails, I could go to a train station and open up my saxophone case and make some bucks. I can do “Mary Had A Little Lamb,” I can do “Happy Birthday.”” ~ Sean Price
- “My grammar school graduating class in 1941 had a little party for 13 or 14 year-old kids. [Trumpeter] King Kolax’s band played for the party and Gene Ammons was playing tenor saxophone with the band. And that’s when I said, “That’s it!” Just like that, tunnelvision ever since.” ~ Johnny Griffin
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“Louis Armstrong changed all the brass players around, but after Bird, all of the instruments had to change – drums, piano, bass, trombones, trumpets, saxophones, everything.” ~ Cootie Williams
- “Alto (saxophone) is just a very hard instrument; there’s so few people that play it really well. I feel it’s the best one, too, now. At first I didn’t feel that way; I wanted to be a tenor player. It took a long time for me to feel that alto was the most expressive of the saxophones.” ~ Art Pepper
- “You don’t try to duplicate certain things that other cats do, because you could never do it as well as they do. Nobody can get on that tenor saxophone and play like Trane, because he’s the only one who can spell out chords and sound good when he does it.” ~ Wynton Marsalis
- “Tim Price is one of the real ones !
A good friend and a great player !” ~ Phil Woods -
“Actually, when I was very young, first starting to play, I think I probably listened more to clarinet players than to saxophones.” ~ Gerry Mulligan
- “From the small clubs of the Harlem Renaissance where he began playing saxophone to world tours for the biggest of the big bands, Benny Carter redefined American jazz. From the start, his fellow musicians said the way he played the sax was amazing. They say that about me, too. (Laughter.) But I don’t think they mean it in quite the same way.” ~ William J. Clinton
- “I understood that if I wanted to work, the saxophone was the main instrument. The clarinet was what we call a double.” ~ Lee Konitz
- “After one month with a saxophone shoved in my mouth, my military combatant’s enthusiasm disappeared completely. Instead of flying choppers behind enemy lines, I started to fantasise about living in New York, London or Paris.” ~ Gilad Atzmon
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“I love music. My secret dream has always been to be a jazz musician. I tried the saxophone for a year or two when I was younger, but unfortunately I had to face the fact that I was not really talented !” ~ Gaspard Ulliel
- “I know I’m an African-American, and I know I play the saxophone, but I’m not a jazz musician. I’m not a classical musician, either. My music is like my life: It’s in between these areas.” ~ Anthony Braxton
- “I was not a band geek, per say. But me and my two older sisters played instruments, so I would come home and my sister Dana would be playing the clarinet or playing the piano, and I would play the saxophone, my other sister would be singing, my mom would be singing. I was not afraid to be musical. That was not something that I thought was uncool.” ~ Miles Teller
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“The saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I’m more interested in music.” ~ Steve Lacy
- “My school music teacher, Al Bennest, introduced me to jazz by playing Louis Armstrong’s record of “West End Blues” for me. I found more jazz on the radio, and began looking for records. My paper route money, and later, money I earned working after school in a print shop and a butcher shop went toward buying jazz records. I taught myself the alto saxophone and the drums in order to play in my high school dance band.” ~ Bill Crow
- “I’m very gratified that I had my little 15 minutes, or whatever [at the Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition]. It certainly didn’t make me rich and famous. But it helped a little bit for a while.” ~ Jon Gordon
