I grew up with the Woodstock generation. I went to Woodstock, and like everybody in my school, I wanted to be in a rock-and-roll band, and most of us were. But I also grew up with a lot of piano lessons and a lot of classical music training.
I actually grew up seeing a lot of classical theater - a lot of Shakespeare - but I have such a passion for music and find that way of telling a story to be really compelling as well.
I grew up around whites, I grew up around Jews, I grew up around blacks, I grew up around Hispanics. We moved a lot.
I grew up mostly in Champaign, Illinois. My dad was at the University of East Illinois, so I was always around the music. One of my dad's buddies was the avant-garde composer John Cage, so I picked up on that weird classical and eclectic music.
I grew up listening to a lot of player-piano music in my house and a lot of old Tin Pan Alley songs and American standards. My dad listened to a lot of traditional Irish music and I grew up doing musical theater. So most of the music I was exposed to as a kid was pre-rock n' roll.
I grew up listening to a lot of classic jazz, and stuff like The Beatles, and old Motown stuff, and a lot of classical music. I just loved all of that.
I grew up partially with classical music but listened to a lot of rock when I was young - I like acoustic, and folk from Mali and Armenia and Turkey.
I grew up listening to my parents' albums. Many of them were either classical - Bach, Beethoven and Brahms - or easy listening, like Mantovani. I loved the spectrum of emotions in classical music, from fortissimo to pianissimo. My early passion for classical made my drumming more musical later on.
A lot of people ask how I ended up doing classical music given that I'm in a rock band. The truth is that it's the other way around. I was trained as a classical musician and then started playing in a rock band later.
Ask about music growing up, I'll tell you I grew up playing classical music, and I didn't grow up in a musical household.
I grew up mostly with classical, big band, and a lot of Irish music - I really didn't start listening to rock and roll until I was maybe sixteen.
Maybe I'm genetically more inclined to music - but the music I make is so far removed from Indian classical music. I grew up in Texas!
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 grew up with classical music, and to a lesser extent electronic music, and that's where I belong, so to speak.
I grew up listening to a lot of emo music, a lot of rock music, a lot of rap music, a lot of trap music, funk, everything.
I'm from a musical family. My father, Pashupati Bhattacharjee, was a great classical singer. My mother, sister, everybody was in music, and I grew up in music.