Ravi Coltrane – HuffPost 8.6.12

Mike Ragogna: Ravi, what advice do you have for new artists?

Ravi Coltrane: Keep an open mind. Music lives not only in the present, it can also live in the future. People have this idea that jazz lives only in the past. Obviously, we have great monuments and great pillars from the past that will always guide us and inform us. But really, they were trying to make sense towards the future. I don’t think you can listen to Thelonius Monk without realizing that it’s really what’s happening. His command and knowledge of tradition and what came before him is firm. But really, his desire to move forward and express a more personal vision in music, that’s when innovation happens. We’re not often taught as young music students to use our intuition and imagination. We’re taught to emulate and copy the past. A lot of us get very comfortable doing that and feel no desire to rely more on our intuitions. Following our path to “what if” is much harder to teach or instill in a young person. For me, there are great benefits with trying to embrace that. All you have to do is look at the past; that’s what these guys did. The John Coltranes, the Miles Davis’, the Charlie Parkers took on the past but embraced the future even more so.