Charlie Haden
Charlie Haden
Charles Edward "Charlie" Hadenwas an American jazz double bass player, bandleader, composer and educator known for his deep, warm sound, and whose career spanned more than fifty years. In the late 1950's, Haden achieved early legendary status as an original member of the ground-breaking Ornette Coleman Quartet that turned the jazz world on its head...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBassist
Date of Birth6 August 1937
CityShenandoah, IA
CountryUnited States of America
I just try to play music from my heart and bring as much beauty as I can to as many people as I can. Just give them other alternatives, especially people who arent exposed to creative music.
I think it’s very important to live in the present. One of the great things that improvising teaches you is the magic of the moment that you’re in … because when you improvise you’re in right now. You’re not in yesterday or tomorrow—you’re right in the moment. Being in that moment really gives you a perspective of life that you never get at any other time as far as learning about your ego… You have to see your unimportance before you can see your importance and your significance to the world.
It used to be that creative music was most of the music that you heard back in the '30s and '40s, and now it's like 3 percent. So, its kind of a struggle getttin' it out there.
The whole underlying theme for the new music... is to communicate honest, human values, and in doing that to try to improve the quality of life.
I always told the people at Cal Arts that if they wanted me to do Jazz studies, first of all, there couldn't be a big band within 500 miles and that I could do what I wanted to do. And they said I could.
I just see myself as a human being that's concerned about life.
I just sit down at the piano and rattle it off.
I've got a collection of songs that I've had, I keep adding to and they're all great American composers. I wanted to showcase American composers and I've done that on a lot of my records and played things by American composers that I really respect.
There's like a special group of people that come from different parts of the planet to study with me. It's nice. I just gave a workshop in Boston at the New England Conservatory, which was really nice.
In the midst of creating, a person is raised to another level of consciousness.
I want them to come away with discovering the music inside them...
Chris (Anderson) is risking his life with every chord, that's how much it means to him. He has such a reverence for beauty, he plays like an angel.
Creative Arts raise a person to another level of consciousness as if you could imagine life before words.
In the midst of creating, a person is raised to another level of consciousness that doesn't have that much to do with everyday thinking. It's as if you could imagine life before there were words.