Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I have the ability to clear the decks and focus on what's happening in the moment. And I get to spend my life doing what I love to do.
I've been very fortunate as a composer to be involved with projects that have really propelled my scores forward. I'm very proud of it.
I do not think that music keeps evolving. It evolved through Bach; since then, in my humble opinion, all the innovations added nothing.
I'm trying to phase out my availability on the phone. People call you when you're walking down the street and say the most random stuff.
It's true that I tend to daydream. I'm the same person in business as I am in music: I can be distracted and absentminded. It's my style.
I think you'll find a significant number of people who decide not to enter competitions because their music just won't fit in that world.
I don't come from a musical family at all, but I realized early on I was a musician. I started begging for a piano when I was 6 years old.
I never wanted to write 'Mamma Mia!' or 'The Book of Mormon' - they're not my thing, I don't care about them. What I do is very different.
I didn't entertain the idea that my music would ever become available in any of the ways that I had previously known music to be available.
I always wanted to be a composer, and I sort of went in to NYU as pre-med because I just thought, 'Well... who actually becomes a composer?'
I can't get into the underlying psyche of someone like Robin Williams, but he was at that level of fame where he was somewhat self-protective.
I think that when you write for stars, I think that you have to be very specific about what they do beautifully and let them bring it to life.
I grew up in Brownsville; most of the kids I grew up with went to jail, not Yale. If they had heard of Yale, they thought it was a lock to pick.
I don't write songs for myself anymore. I only write songs on assignment. It's purely a business, but it is still so important to me emotionally.
If you write enough musicals you pretty much have a sense of where they should go, what you'll need, and when; how to pull people on that journey.
There are actors I have very strong chemical responses to, and I strive always to figure out ways to work with them and get them to sing my stuff.
Often my best work comes from somebody trying to stretch me in a direction that I wouldn't normally want to go in. It's not something I fight at all.
I was always drawn to music. It consumed my thoughts and when I realized I could make people feel something through music that is all I wanted to do.
Writing orchestra music, you need for the emotional content to come from everyone doing everything together, adding up as it goes, a crowd mentality.
I work in a dramatic context, meaning we write with a lot of character specifics, a lot of story specifics. There's a lot of architecture in our songs.
Most things that I write are in very specific forms. A score will have a shape and profile, and then the more emotional and intimate moments will come.
You're supposed to be a control freak when you're an artist. That's the whole point of having a vision: Why have one if you're not going to protect it?
Most successful musicals need to attach themselves to something bigger than themselves, a concept that will make people feel immediately connected to it.
Music is a gestalt. Songs are a life force and they have specific vocabulary to them. You hear a few notes, and they take you into a world of association.
I love 'The Gospel Truth,' the song that opened up 'Hercules.' I thought that song was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed producing that and writing that.
I've been really fortunate to have Bridge Records interested in publishing my music for the past 25 years. Most of my music is available in their catalog.
I noticed things in my computer music that were getting old, and I started to figure out that this has to do with the way the listener interacts with music.
Writing music and lyrics, you tend to become a control freak - sitting alone in your room with a bare light bulb over your head, writing communist manifestos.
I feel that I belong to the 19th century. Some composers' music is very topical. It almost says, 'This is about what I read in newspapers yesterday.' Not mine.
The things I tend to do best are the things that are the most overtly emotional, whether it's sentimental or whether it's celebratory or whether it's conflicted.
When you think of Mitch Leigh as a businessman, remember he's also a composer. And when you think of Mitch Leigh as a composer, remember he's also a businessman.
I've always juggled a lot of projects because at least half the projects you do get shelved. So you have to do a lot of things in order for things to move forward.
Live-action films are very much a director's medium, and that director is going to be a very strong voice, a stronger individual voice than you'd have in animation.
I really said, 'Okay, this is just the right job for me. This is really what I need to be doing: telling stories through music in lots of different styles of music.'
Ive managed to dodge the curse. Not all my family have. Of course, music helped me - music is all about civilization, about something worthwhile. Its all about ideas.
I've managed to dodge the curse. Not all my family have. Of course, music helped me - music is all about civilization, about something worthwhile. It's all about ideas.
Movies, there are moments when you're writing a song or demoing, a moment in the recording studio. Musicals much more just eat up your life for a certain period of time.
The notation is more important than the sound. Not the exactitude and success with which a notation notates a sound; but the musicalness of the notation in its notating.
If you have more money than you need, you have to give it away. It's a duty. I get to choose whom to sponsor, and I like to give to the areas that I know something about.
When I first started working at Disney animation, I can't tell you how many people said to me, 'Oh, man, take a powder.' Nobody takes animated musicals seriously. I swear.
As a kid, I loved classical music. Composers like Beethoven were like rock stars to me. Then there were the real rock stars: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan.
I think if you see that no one is going to laugh at you for it, I think the concept of living nicely will be infectious. I believe there is room for the absence of cynicism.
When I was younger, I'd get very invested in things. It's a hard lesson to learn, but you have to know that if you want to find gold, you've got to love the process of digging.
Truth be told, of course, what I enjoy most is reinventing myself and doing new projects where I work in new genres, or I get to find what the voice of a particular musical is.
It's very interesting for me to listen to music with my wife. She's not a musician but she very often makes comments about pieces in ways that are similar to what I'm thinking.
Composing easy? I find it easy if - big if - the idea is right, if I have the right collaborator, and if my collaborator is in the room. I like my collaborator to be in the room.
'Snow White' was really hip for its time. Walt Disney was basically using Sigmund Romberg and operetta in the telling of the story, and through animation - that was revolutionary.
I know I'm really good at writing for the theater. I can deny it all I want. Other people can fight me on it. It doesn't really matter. It's the thing I happen to know is my gift.
Songs should have an infectious melody and rhythm and, I think, should elicit an emotion of happiness or of celebration or of sadness or of sorrow or of love or laughter, whatever.
As much as I can act, I don't have anything in me that yearns to be an actor - that sense of needing to be onstage, in costume, in character; that is utterly not interesting to me.