A biography for Jan Garbarekhasn’t been written yet.
“The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.”
“I feel very strongly when there's no chance for me to find a key to a piece.”
“When we are on tour we also take chances.”
“If you feel you have the right key, you try to make some phrase or sound that will fit.”
“Coltrane was moving out of jazz into something else. And certainly Miles Davis was doing the same thing.”
“There's a certain phraseology involved in jazz, and I've moved away from that.”
“Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, but that's what we face when we're dealing with improvisation.”
“You have to react to what's around you in the moment, whatever the music is. Just think of it as some place you have to enter and you need to find the key.”
“Jazz, for me, is a closed circuit, like the term baroque in the world of classical music.”