A Quote by Missy Mazzoli

I have this ideal listener, as John Cage did. This listener doesn't bring expectations that my music will fit into some part of music history, or that it will do any particular thing. This listener is just open to listening.
I'm very thankful, hearing impairment or not, that I've brought listening into my life. I will never say that I'm a good listener, however. Thinking that I was a good listener was one thing that kept me from being a good listener. It's a very dangerous thought. I just want to be better.
Surely the hold of great music on the listener is precisely this: that the listener is made whole; and at the same time part of an image of infinite grace and grandeur which is creation.
I'm not sure it's a better music world of appreciation and performance. I think the listener is a different guy, and listening is something he does in passing, with other stuff going on. There's less care and understanding of the relationship between the song and the listener.
Music should be demanding for the listener. You can gain more out of it that way. I always try to leave space in the music for the listener to have their own experience of it, so it's not bombarded with only one meaning.
When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.
Perhaps within the next hundred years, science will perfect a process of thought transference from composer to listener. The composer will sit alone on the concert stage and merely 'think' his idealized conception of his music. Instead of recordings of actual music sound, recordings will carry the brainwaves of the composer directly to the mind of the listener.
If the music has a logic of its own - as I think my music has - an open-minded listener will apprehend and understand.
Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music as if for the first time, as if I had never heard it before. Being so inescapably a part of it, I'll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels, and that's too bad.
To me, soul music is anything that is made from the heart, and therefore moves the listener; it's not overly self-aware, and leaves room for the listener to make their own conclusions.
With the audience, I always say it's about giving the people an experience. And what the experience is about, it transcends just the music, and genre, and the venue. It's about the people coming together to share a profound and transformative moment. So that means the listener is actively engaged, and the listener is a part of the show, they're a part of the experience.
The challenge for a good musician is to bring out compositions that seem fresh to the listener, even if the listener has heard the song or the composition before.
The chronic kicker, even the most violent critic, will frequently soften and be subdued in the presence of a patient, sympathetic listener— a listener who will be silent while the irate fault-finder dilates like a king cobra and spews the poison out of his system.
Music is always for the listener, but the first listener is always the musician
Since true listening involves a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the others. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will feel less and less vulnerable, and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to appreciate each other more and more, and the dance of love is begun again.
I think the most important thing for a listener is to realize that he, too, should not listen to music in a passive way; that if you sit in a concert hall and expect to be moved or taken off your seat by the music, it will not happen.
You gotta make sure the listener is listening to you, so if you put it into a song, often times, if the song is striking enough, then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear of the listener the whole time.
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