Education Quote by George Shearing

Shearing is doing a musician’s version of reputational judo: he borrows Duke Ellington’s authority, then quietly uses it to undercut the whole idea of a “definitive” record. The line sounds like modest craft-talk, but it’s also a pressure-release valve for an art form that gets frozen in time the moment it’s pressed to vinyl. Jazz, especially, is built on motion - nightly revisions, small risks, the patience to let a tune keep becoming itself. A “current record” isn’t a trophy; it’s a snapshot you happen to like because it reflects the newest you.

The key move is how he frames satisfaction as both real and provisional. “Most pleased” doesn’t mean “finally done.” It means the pleasure is tied to proximity: you’re hearing your latest solutions to old problems (touch, swing, arrangement, interplay), and that feels like progress. There’s a subtle refusal here of nostalgia, the common audience demand that an artist reproduce the past on command. Shearing insists that the only honest standard is forward motion.

The subtext is also protective. In a recording economy that rewards branding and repeatable hits, “you have to assume that you learn” reads like a credo against complacency and against fear. If the next record must be “better,” then the current one can’t be sacred. It’s a practical philosophy for staying alive creatively: treat each release not as a monument, but as evidence that you’re still listening, still adjusting, still willing to be improved by the work.