Photograph by Gordon Parks
“The quality of individuality is an inevitable precondition for music of lasting value. Individuality does not imply novelty for its own sake, since with familiarity, that becomes a cliché. Individuality is unconcerned with convention, or with conformity, either to the past or to the fads of the moment. It is concerned with the quality of the musical drive of the composer’s ideas; it is having one’s own voice, one’s own face."
- Peter Mennin