"When the music is really great, styles doesn't matter.
Most important is that the music (whether improvised or composed) is straight from the heart!"
(Jasper Somsen, op MySpace)

"The best music is created the moment you're truly listening and anticipating, during the interaction with your fellow musicians. If you do exactly the same whilst playing your solo(s), you get the best out of yourself. You're focused outward. Your concentration is centred 'in between' the phrases. This space is 'the silence' between the one right phrase and the (yet to be played) next right phrase. It's the ultimate spot where music is breathing; where inspiration, intuition, knowledge and technique show you the right musical path to be taken."

(Jasper Somsen, geïnspireerd door Kenny Werner's boek "Effortless Mastery")

"Do not fear mistakes. There are none"

 (Miles Davis)  

"Life is too short to do all the things that are good for you: Do the things you love!"
(Bassist John Clayton, tijdens een privéles)

"Your sound is in your ear, in your body. It's not in the bass. You've got to play the ideas that are in your insides."
(Bassist Ray Brown in gesprek met John Clayton - quote uit de liner-notes op Ray Brown's laatste CD: "Walk On") 

"They ... actually practised harmonic movement. They practised possibles. All the possibles, all the alternatives ... they  could go any given way at any time. And I could sense it. They had a way of letting me know they were going in such way ... or say: 'See if you can hear this'."
(Pianist Oscar Peterson, over bassist Ray Brown & gitarist Herb Ellis in zijn biografie "The Will To Swing") 

"It's not the bow; it's not the bass; it's always the player."
(Bassist Paul Ellison, tijdens een masterclass)

"The only thing we have to do is playing from the one right note to the other right note."
(Bassist Ron Carter, ontmoeting op het North Sea Jazz 2008)

"Everytime I write a new composition, I have to practice it. It's like my composing skills are always a ahead of my playing"
(Pianist Enrico Pieranunzi, tijdens een masterclass)

Personal development is devided in seven connecting aspects:
Listening (being open); Enthusiasm (being convinced); Analysis (learning); Effort (taking action); Determination (discipline); Patience (concentration) & Experience (growing).
(Vrij naar boeken van en over de Dalai Lama)

There's no such thing as the division of subjectivity and objectivity.
Quality emerges when subject and object comes and works together.
(Vrij naar: Zen and the Art of Motorcycles Maintainance
- Robert M. Pirsig).