Creativity Quote by Jerome Richardson

Richardson is sneaking a spiritual argument into a musician-to-musician pep talk: instruments are not neutral tools, they are personalities with demands. Coming from a reed-and-flute specialist who lived inside the hard realities of mid-century jazz studios and bandstands, the line lands as both craft advice and cultural stance. In an era when music was increasingly routinized by charts, deadlines, and the churn of commercial recording, he’s defending the stubborn individuality of sound itself.

The phrasing matters. “Has something to say to you” flips the usual hierarchy. The player isn’t the dictator; they’re in a conversation. That’s a jazz ethic in miniature: listening as authority. Then he doubles down with “character,” a word that humanizes brass and wood, implying history, temperament, even mood swings. Anyone who’s played knows the truth behind the romance: two saxes of the same model can feel like different animals. Richardson turns that quirk into a moral principle.

The sting is in “violate.” He’s not warning against experimentation; he’s warning against forcing an instrument to impersonate something it isn’t - bullying tone, ignoring intonation tendencies, treating timbre like a preset. Calling it “almost a sacrilege” sounds hyperbolic until you hear what he’s really protecting: respect for material, lineage, and the intimate feedback loop between body and horn. The subtext is mentorship with an edge: technique isn’t just control, it’s consent. You don’t conquer your instrument; you earn its best voice by honoring what it already wants to be.