"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, on 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, inspired by Kenny Werner's book "Effortless Mastery")

"Do not fear mistakes. There are none"
"There are no wrong notes, only notes at wrong place"
(Miles Davis)

"Life is too short to do all the things that are good for you: Do the things you love!"
(Bassist John Clayton, at a privat lesson)

"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 a conversation with John Clayton - quoted from the liner-notes on Ray Brown's latest 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, about bassist Ray Brown & guitarist Herb Ellis in his biography: "The Will To Swing")

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

"The only thing we have to do is playing from the one right note to the other right note."
(Bassist Ron Carter, meeting Jasper Somsenat the North Sea Jazz Festival 2008)

"Everytime I write a new composition, I have to practice it. It seems like my composing skills are always a ahead of my playing"
(Pianist Enrico Pieranunzi, at a 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).
(Inspired on books by the Dalai Lama)

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

(Photo by Robbert Kamphuis)