I don’t enjoy traveling in America. I don’t like the food, the cars. It is not exotic enough. It all tastes a bit like airline food. Carla Bley Read Quote
I just got to hear every note. After I left Birdland, I started working at the Jazz Gallery. In the end, I still couldn’t play, but I knew how to listen. I was probably the world’s best listener. Carla Bley Read Quote
Living composers writing for big band are very few and far between. There are not a lot of them, and I have a talent for doing it. I am zeroing in on what I do best. Carla Bley Read Quote
There are times when what’s happening in rock is the best music in the world, and there are times when there is nothing worthwhile at all. Carla Bley Read Quote
When you are studying jazz, the best thing to do is listen to records or listen to live music. It isn’t as though you go to a teacher. You just listen as much as you can and absorb everything. Carla Bley Read Quote
Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker seemed so sophisticated and bad. I wanted to be like that. Carla Bley Read Quote
When Ronald Reagan was elected I was on a bus traveling with a band in France. I wrote a little arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner in a minor key. Carla Bley Read Quote
