Top 45 Dianne Reeves Quotes

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.

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!

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.

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.

I come from a family of musicians.

I had aunts who played piano and sang and also were entertainers, so music was very much a part of my life.

Jazz musicians have always tended to have cult followings, which is pretty wonderful.

I’ve always respected and taken care of my instrument.

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.

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.

My mother was actually born in Toledo and raised in Detroit.

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.

I believe that music should really be without boundaries.

Herb Wong was an incredible man. We met when I was performing with Clark Terry at the Wichita Jazz Festival around 1974.

When I sing a song, I want someone to recognize ‘Now that’s Dianne singing that song.’

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.

My foundation is jazz. I do all the things jazz musicians do.

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.’

I’m always inspired to push forward.

Even in a world with much sadness, at its essence, life is beautiful.

The way I look at it, people pay me to travel. Once we get to the stage, that part is easy.

Art is a direct reflection of the life you live. What you experience comes out in your work.

One of the things that I love about Sarah Vaughan is that she was always very current.

I’m a great cook. People have asked me to do a cookbook.

I like coming home and sharing things I’ve tasted or seen.

My musicians know all of my music, and so that makes for something different.

I come from a family of storytellers. My grandmother was great at telling stories, and my mother was an amazing storyteller.

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.

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.

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.

I love being with artists because I’m always open to getting into something.

I love Denver.

I have a sketch of an idea and I never really talk about: perhaps do another jazz record, but with other elements involved.

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.

Jazz musicians have always taken the standards of their time and performed them with a jazz sensibility.

My mother was really amazing and left me with a whole lot of treasures. I miss her terribly.

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.

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.

Music is a conversation between the audience and me, and I love that about my profession.

I don’t like a lot of monitors on stage. I like the real raw sound of the open piano.

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.

I think people have come to know that I am not comfortable in a box, you know, and that I love music.

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.

Oh my gosh, I love Jon Hendricks.

Go out into the world with your passion and love for what you do, and just never give up.