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Gunther Schuller Biography

Gunther Schuller

Gunther Alexander Schuller (November 22, 1925 – June 21, 2015) was an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian and jazz musician.

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Gunther Schuller Quotes

If you mess around with jazz, you better have a good drummer and a good bass player.

Bass, Jazz, Mess, Player

My primary calling, I always knew since the age of 11, was as a composer, and so that had to take priority.

Age, Calling, Primary, Priorities, Take

So this anchoring in some way, in some important way in the past without repeating the past, but on the basis of the past building something new: that is what is important.

Anchoring, Anchors, Basis, Important, Past, Repeating

Symphony musicians are not trained in improvising, certainly not in a jazz style.

Improvising, Musician, Musicians, Style, Symphony

I wanted to be a painter and an artist. And it's interesting that in some of my later musical works, I refer so often and associate myself with works of art.

Art, Associate, Interesting, Musical, Refer, Works

As long as I'm healthy and can keep going that's what I'll do.

Healthy, Keep, Long, Never Quit

I wanted to be an artist, but at age 11, somehow all this musical knowledge and information and love for music that I had came out, and then suddenly it was very clear that I wanted to be a musician of some sort.

Age, Artist, Came, Knowledge, Musical, Musician

His musical inspiration operates in a world uncluttered by conventional bar lines, conventional chord changes, and conventional ways of blowing or fingering a saxophone. Such practical 'limitations' did not even have to be overcome in his music; they somehow never existed for him. Despite this-or more accurately, because of this-his playing has a deep inner logic. Not an obvious surface logic, it is based on subtleties of reaction, subtleties of timing and color that are, I think, quite new to jazz-at least they have never appeared in so pure and direct a form.

Appeared, Color, Inspiration, Operates, Think, Thinking

I was playing in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra as principal horn. I was there for some 15 years - one of the most exciting and great musical periods in my life.

Exciting, Horn, Metropolitan, Musical, Orchestra, Years

If we could ever find that moment, maybe thousands of years from now, where all the musics of the worlds would be communicating with each other, there would be no more wars, there would be peace.

War, Years, Would Be, Thousands, Musics, Peace

And it is this sense that some of us have to contribute to the culture, to the society in ways that may hurt financially, so what? We do it because we are born to do it, we feel we have no other choice and so be it.

Choices, Culture, Financially, Hurt, Sense

After the war, once the bop revolution had taken hold, there were all kinds of young musicians, talented young musicians, who were ready for this fusion of classical and jazz.

Fusion, Kinds, Revolution, Taken, War, Young

Many people think of me as a modernist, as a radical in music, you know, someone who's always sort of at the avant-garde of musics, but I'm also quite a traditionalist.

Avant Garde, Music, People, Quite, Think, Thinking

I don't hate work, composing is not work for me, it's my pleasure; it's my life. So why should I stop? If something is pleasurable and exciting and rewarding, why should one stop?

Hate, Pleasure, Rewarding, Stop, Stop Hating

As rich as Cincinnati was in live music, New York was even more.

Live Music, Music, New York, Rich, York

My whole childhood was filled with classical music and going to concerts of the New York Philharmonic and other New York ensembles and organizations, but interestingly, I didn't become conscious of wanting to be a musician until I was about 11. I was a rather late starter.

Childhood, Musician, New York, Organization, Wanting