Life & Mortality Quote by Stan Getz

Getz is taking a scalpel to the way performance gets flattened into “content.” Jazz, in his telling, is built on risk: the edge-of-seat moment where a phrase might crack, a harmony might detour, a solo might land somewhere nobody predicted. “Rehearse jazz to death” is a deliberately ugly image, like overcooking something delicate until all the flavor is gone. He’s warning that too much preparation doesn’t just polish the music; it kills the very conditions that make it jazz.

The punchline is “to get the camera angles,” a sly jab at productions that treat musicians like props in a visual plan. The camera isn’t neutral here. It represents an outside logic - broadcast, branding, the fetish of control - imposed on an art form that thrives on real-time negotiation. Getz isn’t romanticizing sloppiness; he’s defending spontaneity as a professional value. The best jazz groups rehearse fundamentals so they can be free, not so they can hit marks like actors.

Context matters: by the mid-to-late 20th century, jazz was increasingly mediated - television spots, festival stages, studio sessions engineered for repeatability. Getz, a major figure who moved between clubs and high-profile recordings, knew the temptation to streamline unpredictability for the sake of a clean take or a tidy shot. The line works because it’s practical musician talk that doubles as cultural critique: when the frame dictates the music, the music stops being alive.