Top 100 Dianne Reeves Quotes December 20, 2020 by Krista Aniston Leave a Comment “Even in a world with much sadness, at its essence, life is beautiful.”― Dianne Reeves“Go out into the world with your passion and love for what you do, and just never give up.”― Dianne Reeves“I think the only way for you to grow and evolve is to keep listening, keep moving forward, keep jumping in and trying to experience.”― Dianne Reeves“Art is a direct reflection of the life you live. What you experience comes out in your work.”― Dianne Reeves“I feel proud of my journey. I wouldn’t change it.”― Dianne Reeves“Herb Wong was an incredible man. We met when I was performing with Clark Terry at the Wichita Jazz Festival around 1974.”― Dianne Reeves“I always say that improvisation is the utterance of one’s spirit, and it dictates your life experience, and that’s how you find your concepts and your way for painting your musical picture.”― Dianne Reeves“When I first heard Nina Simone, her naked truth shocked me. Whenever she sang, it felt like lightning bolts in my soul. Every song was like a movie, a unique and very different vignette.”― Dianne Reeves“I like coming home and sharing things I’ve tasted or seen.”― Dianne Reeves“Your voice is not your instrument. Your voice is the character that you build, your innermost feelings, the things that you want to say, and your instrument is the vehicle that you use to carry the message.”― Dianne Reeves“I had really great art classes. Really great art teachers. Arts played a very important role in having a place to express yourself uniquely.”― Dianne Reeves“I have a sketch of an idea and I never really talk about: perhaps do another jazz record, but with other elements involved.”― Dianne Reeves“I remember my grandmother used to always say, ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.’ But when I realized that music was inside of me, I decided I’m putting all my eggs in one basket.”― Dianne Reeves“I’m always inspired to push forward.”― Dianne Reeves“Art and culture and all of these things – they really matter. They shape your individuality.”― Dianne Reeves“I had aunts who played piano and sang and also were entertainers, so music was very much a part of my life.”― Dianne Reeves“I’m a chameleon. When you put me in certain soils, musically speaking, I will be in that place.”― Dianne Reeves“My friend Harry Belafonte is an activist and musician, an extraordinary man who has dedicated his life to human rights. He taught me the power of words and that music can be used to heal and educate people.”― Dianne Reeves“I always have a little bit of Brazil and New Orleans in my band.”― Dianne Reeves“I love New York City because there’s something to do 24/7, something that will make you see things in a whole different light. Like they say, it’s the city that never sleeps.”― Dianne Reeves“I loved singing something like ‘I’ve Got My Eye On You’ when it’s really about the FBI. It turns a love song into something else!”― Dianne Reeves“When I worked with my uncle, I loved the fact that jazz music demanded that you use your own unique approach.”― Dianne Reeves“I love to create something new every night onstage; that makes a big difference.”― Dianne Reeves“The music we do is weaved together through stories and life experiences. When people come to hear us, I hope they are are uplifted and that we give them a lot to take home.”― Dianne Reeves“My musical selections are a reflection of how I grew up. Because, back then, you could see Miles Davis and Ravi Shankar on the same stage. And nobody thought anything of it, other than the fact that it was great music.”― Dianne Reeves“I’ve always respected and taken care of my instrument.”― Dianne Reeves“Jazz musicians have always taken the standards of their time and performed them with a jazz sensibility.”― Dianne Reeves“It’s funny: I look at songs, and I guess they each tell a story, and the different songs talk about different things. But they’re unified by the rhythm underneath and the way that we decided to arrange and play them.”― Dianne Reeves“I did a project called ‘Sing The Truth,’ which was a lot of fun. It started out being a celebration of the music of Nina Simone, and it was me and Lizz Wright and Angelique Kidjo.”― Dianne Reeves“I grew up listening to all kinds of music. When I came up, you would hear people like Marvin Gaye talking about Sarah Vaughan. You would go to a show and see Ella Fitzgerald performing the music of the Beatles.”― Dianne Reeves“My musicians know all of my music, and so that makes for something different.”― Dianne Reeves“I come from a family of musicians.”― Dianne Reeves“When I found out how music made me feel and how my singing made other people feel, that’s when I decided this is what I wanted to do.”― Dianne Reeves“I think that when I started singing, I didn’t know what I wanted to do; I only knew what I didn’t want to do.”― Dianne Reeves“My mother would say, ‘Stay ready so you don’t have to get ready.’ I spent a lot of my early years preparing for beautiful moments that have unfolded in my life so far.”― Dianne Reeves“The biggest thing is, when I was coming up, the thing that made you wonderful was your uniqueness. People celebrated that.”― Dianne Reeves“When I was in junior high school, I knew I really wanted to sing.”― Dianne Reeves“Nina Simone is a musical genius and a rich and precious treasure who paid a heavy price for her artistic freedom.”― Dianne Reeves“I never wanted to do anything else, really. I left home at an early age trying to find my voice, my niche in music.”― Dianne Reeves“I grew up with great mentors in my life who helped me become the singer I am today.”― Dianne Reeves“I never looked or really believed that music should be categorized into particular genres.”― Dianne Reeves“Music is a conversation between the audience and me, and I love that about my profession.”― Dianne Reeves“And I’ve found that, you know, the world of music is so vast and so broad, but at the same time, it’s easy to find parts of yourself in places that you wouldn’t even think that you were, you know?”― Dianne Reeves“I think jazz is the foundation for a lot of great musicians, and then after that, you know, it’s this broad expression of things that really have influenced and addressed your life.”― Dianne Reeves“I love Denver.”― Dianne Reeves“I lived in Los Angeles for a long time, and in a lot of ways, I felt like I lived in my car.”― Dianne Reeves“Anything that had to do with music is what I wanted to do.”― Dianne Reeves“Being from Colorado is, to me, very, very special. I’m just very thankful to be here. I’m also thankful to be a part of the history of this state.”― Dianne Reeves“Jazz is such a living art form. It happens right in the moment. You weave a story by changing certain elements and components.”― Dianne Reeves“My mother was actually born in Toledo and raised in Detroit.”― Dianne Reeves“Oh my gosh, I love Jon Hendricks.”― Dianne Reeves“A lot of young people want to become jazz singers, but there are not more jam sessions like there used to be. I just want to have the opportunity to be able to bring that to some young people.”― Dianne Reeves“People think jazz music is all standards and the Great American Songbook. But it’s really about the sensibility, the feel you bring to the music.”― Dianne Reeves“I think an artist who has it in their heart to do or say something, they’ll say it. It’s not something that’s mandatory, but it will come out.”― Dianne Reeves“When I moved to Los Angeles, right away I met all kinds of musicians.”― Dianne Reeves“I think people have come to know that I am not comfortable in a box, you know, and that I love music.”― Dianne Reeves“My records are one thing. My live performances are something totally different because they’re very improvised performances.”― Dianne Reeves“The thing that I tell young people is everybody is unique in their approach to the music, and you have to protect that.”― Dianne Reeves“My junior high school teacher, Bennie Williams, was really more than a music teacher. She taught us poetry. She helped us put on school shows. She did all these kinds of things to help us stand in each other’s shoes, and it was a really powerful time. That’s when I discovered that I could sing.”― Dianne Reeves“In high school, we had a really great jazz program that I finally was able to be a part of. They only wanted instrumentalists; they didn’t want any singers. But I made my way in, and I remember the conductor of the band wrote a lot of arrangements and asked me what I wanted to sing.”― Dianne Reeves“Early on, I started with classical voice and had that wonderful foundation. For where I wanted to go at that time, there were no teachers to teach it, so I came up with all kinds of different ways to develop the sound of my voice.”― Dianne Reeves“I’ve always had really wonderful people around me. But early on, I remember I would walk into a session or go do something with some musicians, and they viewed me, basically, as their chick singer.”― Dianne Reeves“Lizz Wright, we call her lovingly ‘Amazing Grace.’ She has a folk and gospel kind of approach to the music, and she writes beautiful lyrics and songs. She’s like this balm that is really full and very rich and deep.”― Dianne Reeves“Now, jazz institutions are more readily available for young people, but for me, the institutions were the bands that I was in. When I worked with Clark Terry, that was the beginning of school for me, and Harry Belafonte and Sergio Mendes, they were all my universities.”― Dianne Reeves“There is a certain kind of fire that happens when you fall in love with a musician. I guess you understand one another because you’re connected by a creative desire.”― Dianne Reeves“I had a few celebrity crushes when I was growing up, including Eddie Kendricks from the Temptations. And I loved Marvin Gaye – I thought he was everything and instantly fell for his voice.”― Dianne Reeves“I’ve dated a few musicians in my life, and it’s kind of always been that way for me. You unite through creativity and share that process and more together.”― Dianne Reeves“My foundation is jazz. I do all the things jazz musicians do.”― Dianne Reeves“I came up at a time in the late ’60s, early ’70s where music was without boundaries. You’d go into a music store, and the music was in alphabetical order. I hadn’t heard of that word ‘genre.’”― Dianne Reeves“Each project that you do is something you believe in for that moment in time.”― Dianne Reeves“Some people think that all you do is record, and it’s not the case. You take on other projects as well, and you have to live a little bit because it inspires your work.”― Dianne Reeves“The music industry is changing. You only hear a sprinkling of big names, but there are a lot of really wonderful young musicians with great voices and lyrical content who have refined their sound. They’re up in here, so don’t think they’re not. There’s this wealth of talent below the surface that’s ready to explode.”― Dianne Reeves“I knew what the story behind ‘Dreams’ was. It was about Stevie Knicks’ relationship. But when I sing it, it’s about sharing some sage advice with somebody.”― Dianne Reeves“The way I look at it, people pay me to travel. Once we get to the stage, that part is easy.”― Dianne Reeves“I really enjoy going out with my jazz group. That’s something that I don’t ever want to stop doing.”― Dianne Reeves“I don’t like a lot of monitors on stage. I like the real raw sound of the open piano.”― Dianne Reeves“I’ve always liked a lot of different kinds of music.”― Dianne Reeves“Too many people judge a singer like Beyonce by what they see on the surface. Knowing the musicians she’s worked with and how she works, I have a lot of respect for her.”― Dianne Reeves“Singers like Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar are very conscious of what’s going on around them, and they’re waking up lot of young people with that knowledge. They bring their enlightenment to the world; the world that is buying their records.”― Dianne Reeves“I’m a great cook. People have asked me to do a cookbook.”― Dianne Reeves“I believe that music should really be without boundaries.”― Dianne Reeves“One of the things that I love about Sarah Vaughan is that she was always very current.”― Dianne Reeves“The biggest thing is to just keep your voice in shape so that when the emotion hits, it’s there to have the colors to paint those pictures with the lyrics as well as the sound.”― Dianne Reeves“When I sing a song, I want someone to recognize ‘Now that’s Dianne singing that song.’”― Dianne Reeves“I didn’t learn the word ‘genre’ until way, way late – I mean, like, in the ’80s.”― Dianne Reeves“Jazz onstage is a very intimate exchange between everybody that’s onstage.”― Dianne Reeves“I come from a family of storytellers. My grandmother was great at telling stories, and my mother was an amazing storyteller.”― Dianne Reeves“I love being with artists because I’m always open to getting into something.”― Dianne Reeves“My mother was really amazing and left me with a whole lot of treasures. I miss her terribly.”― Dianne Reeves“I have one closet that’s just shoes. The woman go, ‘Amen,’ and the men go, ‘Oh my God.’ It’s color-coordinated from the ceiling to the floor, from evening to casual.”― Dianne Reeves“I listen to music all the time, and a lot of the things I cover are the standards of my time, and they work for me.”― Dianne Reeves“I never called myself a jazz singer. I just call myself a vocalist because I love to sing all kinds of things.”― Dianne Reeves“My demographic is very broad. Once they come, they had an idea about jazz, and then they hear me, and they come back with sisters, brothers, and kids. My audience looks like America to me.”― Dianne Reeves“Jazz musicians have always tended to have cult followings, which is pretty wonderful.”― Dianne Reeves“Brazilian music has been a part of almost every record I’ve done, and I’d eventually like to record an entire album of Brazilian music.”― Dianne Reeves“My life has been going in ways I never could have dreamed of – doing the closing celebration for the Olympic Games and being appointed the creative chair for jazz at the L.A. Philharmonic. So I’ve just decided I’ll go with my flow and be very prepared.”― Dianne Reeves“If a song feels good to me, it’s not very difficult to make it my own.”― Dianne Reeves“I look back at Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, and especially Betty Carter, whom I admire the most, and I say, OK, they set a standard of excellence. I listen to them not for what they are doing, but to study where they are coming from because, for me, jazz is life experience.”― Dianne Reeves“In any event, I’m proud to wear the badge of jazz vocalist if that’s what people want to call me; but at the same time, there are many other things I like to do.”― Dianne Reeves“The Confederate flag is a divisive presence – it’s the opposite of everything my artistry means and represents.”― Dianne Reeves
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