Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I knew Elvis Presley very well. He always felt somebody was after him. When you have that kind of a fear, that kind of an attitude, you attract people who want to do you harm.
I can't say that electronic gear is restrictive. I think it is a challenge to play with electronic gear, and I regularly [perform] concerts with guys who are processing sound.
I know that our world is going through a very difficult time right now, but I will never lose my faith in humanity, and our incredible ability to overcome just about anything.
Sometimes when I sit down to practice and there is no one else in the room, I have to stifle an impulse to ring for the elevator man and offer him money to come in and hear me.
I tell the audience every night, "I hope you didn't pay more than face value on that ticket, because we ain't worth more than that, and you ain't gonna get any more than that."
When I was 19, I made my first good week's pay as a club musician. It was enough money for me to quit my job at the factory and still pay the rent and buy some food. I freaked.
Israel is in the grip of a ghetto mentality. We have a powerful army. We have the atomic bomb. But the psychology of what comes out of Israel has the tone of the Warsaw Ghetto.
I like writing different types of music. I like writing Christian music. I like collaborating with Christian artists. We have a Christian following. I love writing kids' music.
The London Olympic Opening Ceremony was excellent. The mixture of old and new, of classic and contemporary was a beautiful reflection of Great Britain. Danny Boyle is a genius.
When I appeared before the draft board examiner during World War II, he asked me if I thought I could kill. "I don't know about strangers," I replied, "but friends, certainly."
Sometimes we get caught up in our troubles and our problems and we let life slip away, but life is precious, all of life, and one must try to take in as much of it as possible.
All my musical foundations go back to the age of 3. My family tell me that I used to listen to the old crystal set, then go to the piano and pick out the tune that I just heard.
Being in music forever, I have good pitch, so I know when I'm singing in or out of tune. But the key to really good singing is just relaxing and thinking about what the song is.
There is no such thing as a Difficult Piece. A piece is either impossible - or it is easy. The process whereby it migrates from one category to the other is known as practicing.
Every time I start a new work, I try to be different and to start with a new perspective, so I search for a new idea, something which gives me a new way to access my creativity.
I have lived through many wars and have lost everything many times Yet, life is beautiful, and I have so much to learn and enjoy. I have no space nor time for pessimism and hate.
I was listening to stuff and I realized that I've had a lot of different lives. You know the theory [that says] every seven years, you have a different life? I think that's true.
On Nov. 5, 2012, my friend Elliott Carter died in New York at the age of 103. For me, he was and remains one of the most interesting figures of music history in the past century.
I don't profess to be a healer, a minister, a priest. I feel as an entertainer I can do more good for the world than I would if I were a soapbox orator or a self-made politician.
I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.
It’s really strange, but they speak to me — the notes and the chords. So when I hear other people’s music, I can feel the composer. Whoever created that, I can see in their soul.
There will be miracles After the last war is won Science and poetry rule in the new world to come Prophets and angels Gave us the power to see What an amazing future there will be
Lyrics are very different. There is a clear line between that and a poem. Something that has been a source of great excitement and delight for me is this idea that I get to rhyme.
The thing is that I'm naturally curious about a lot of different disciplines in music, and I enjoy doing them. And as long as people are nice enough to let me, I'll keep on trying.
I am still happy to be close to the city, [to be] connected to the intellectual source in Ferndorf. In this area, [I feel] connected with nature and unimportant in a postitive way.
I love the road, and I love coming in contact with the fans. They talk to me and that's irreplaceable. But when I get tired, I head to the studio and I am in there for a long time.
I have been both praised and criticized. The criticism stung, but the praise sometimes bothered me even more. To have received such praise and honors has always been puzzling to me.
Scriabin slept with Chopin under his pillow, and I slept with Wagner under mine. I could not concentrate on memorizing Bach fugues, but I had all of 'Gotterdammerung' in my fingers.
I tried playing for the public, and I selected music that I thought would be pleasing to them. Times are different now. Today, I play the music I want, and I just try to do my best.
There is also the guitar player Pat Metheny with whom I'd like to work with: he is so elegant and so emotional when he plays that I am sure that, together, we could make a good team.
But classical music is not entertainment, and I feel viciously strong about that. Classical music is forever. Entertainment is something that is here today, and may be gone tomorrow.
Played percussively, the piano is a bore. If I go to a concert and someone plays like that I have two choices: go home or go to sleep. The goal is to make the piano sing, sing, sing.
We need to learn how to love each other. If we cannot do that, then we need to learn to respect one another. If we can't manage to do that, then we must learn to tolerate each other.
Perhaps one of the most important lessons that I continue to have reinforced is to always have faith and believe in yourself. To never lose sight of who you are and to know yourself.
They say that no one's gonna play this on the radio. They said the melancholy blues were dead and gone. But only songs like these played in minor keys, keep those memories holding on.
We do a lot of light classical programming with that, too... obviously... a lot of Tchaikovsky music, Grieg, things like that which have become less classical with classical concerts.
I am surprising myself [at] each show, and the delivered piano often surprises me. Sometimes the piano is so old that I don't have to prepare it, and sometimes I have a concert grand!
I hope that my new status will be an example of Israeli-Palestinian co-existence, I believe that the destinies of the Israeli people and the Palestinian people are inextricably linked.
After playing so many songs in churches for eight or nine years, I've learned what songs people react to. Then I just had fun with the arrangements. That's how this album came together.
People who don't do jazz think it's black magic. But really, it's just a matter of getting used to it. It's fun to gamble. The trick is not to fall back on the things you've done before.
What good are vitamins? Eat a lobster, eat a pound of caviar - live! If you are in love with a beautiful blonde with an empty face and no brains at all, don't be afraid. Marry her! Live!
You have to really have the will to hang onto the first note as it is being played, and then really stay with it and take the flight, as it were, you know, for the duration of the piece.
Teddy Wilson, I think, said a little while ago that its much easier to come in and play whatever comes into your mind, without obeying any of the laws of bass line and harmony and so on.
I used almost every penny I ever made to build recording studios in every city I lived in. I don't have much to show for all the TV money except a lot of musical gear and a lot of songs.
I had to dare a little bit. Who am I kidding-I had to dare a lot. Dont wear one ring, wear five or six. People ask how I can play with all those rings, and I reply, Very well, thank you.
The spirituality of the music is something that I always search for in what I do, because I think that music has to have everything inside: a strong architecture, a support, the emotion.
The most important thing is to make a percussive instrument a singing instrument. Teachers should stress this aspect in their instruction, but it seems that very few of them actually do.
The live concerts are everything and I’m very grateful that most of my career, I’m a live artist, I’ve been doing this. So I’ve traveled quite a lot, played in - I never stopped playing.
If you make music for the human needs you have within yourself, then you do it for all humans who need the same things. You enrich humanity with the profound expression of these feelings.
Beethoven's importance in music has been principally defined by the revolutionary nature of his compositions. He freed music from hitherto prevailing conventions of harmony and structure.