Creativity Quote by Marian McPartland

"There are a million good tunes" is McPartland cutting through jazz-world mythology with the cool practicality of a working musician. Jazz culture loves its sacred objects: the canon, the standards, the handful of "great" songs treated like holy writ. McPartland, who spent a lifetime playing, interviewing, and reharmonizing those very standards, gently punctures the idea that greatness is rare. Not because she undervalues the classics, but because she knows abundance is the real condition of music. The world is not starving for melody; it is starving for attention, interpretation, and taste.

The line also carries the sound of her career: a pianist who made discovery her method. On Piano Jazz, she could take a tune you thought you knew and make it feel newly built in real time, while also giving guests room to reveal their own musical logic. That format is the hidden argument behind the quote: the tune isn't the performance. A "good" tune is only raw material until someone with imagination, discipline, and ears gives it a point of view.

There's a democratic subtext here, too. If there are a million good tunes, gatekeeping starts to look like insecurity. The job becomes less about guarding a repertoire and more about choosing wisely, listening deeply, and making something personal out of plenty. In a culture that fetishizes the shortage of genius, McPartland offers a musician's truth: the magic isn't in how few great songs exist; it's in what you do with the one on the stand tonight.