Top 1200 Classical Musicians Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

Folk musicians have a lot of the same self-importance, but they're way more cruel and jealous than rock musicians - I know this for a fact because I used to be a folk musician.

We're genuinely happy if some musicians of this younger generation are influenced by our music, as we were ourselves influenced 10 years ago by older musicians.

A lot of musicians aren't proud; they'll do other work, just to be able to play music. I guess that's the way it's always going to be - musicians will have to suffer to a certain degree in order to obtain their outlet.

The Beatles are the classical music of rock n' roll. And rock n' roll is far more widespread than classical will ever be.

We have to go and show these people what classical music is. We say sometimes that classical music has a small audience, but it's because people don't have the chance to be closer to it.

I love to play a character. If I'm playing Cinderella or Aurora in 'Sleeping Beauty' or something like that, then I enjoy classical a lot. But to do just a two-minute solo, purely to show classical aesthetic, is not my favorite thing to do.

I had a lot of classical influences. I had classical music and opera and literature, but I also liked sleaze. And putting it together, sleaze and glamour, it just made sense to me.

Obviously there are pieces of classical music that are some of the most beautiful music ever written, for me anyway is a lot of classical or contemporary music, so it's a different kind of space that you enter when you're listening to it.

There are so many great players walking the planet but it is rare to find musicians that can live life together in a way that isn't ego centric. For whatever reason, musicians are just bizarrely composed humans. I think I'm living in the middle of a miracle.

Something I've learned being in this industry for so long is that if you want to work with somebody, call them up. Very few musicians have any illusions about genre boundaries. They are useful descriptive terms, but they don't really bind musicians.

There's a bit of a new guard of contemporary classical musicians in New York, and we play a lot of different kinds of music together. We do pop studio sessions, and we'll also play John Cage and more avant-garde work. We're developing a language of music that comes with a lot of different styles, different kinds of work.

I can think and play stuff in classical music that possibly violinists who didn't have access to other types of music could never do. It means I'm more flexible within classical music, to be a servant to the composer.

Go back to classical times, say classical Greece. Who drank the hemlock? Was it someone who was conforming, obeying the gods? Or was it someone who was disrupting the youth and questioning the faith and belief? Socrates, in other words. It was Socrates.

A lot of my colleagues just don't really realize that they have to work in order to get the interest of an audience, especially with young kids, especially because it [classical music] is not that popular. You don't see it on TV, you don't hear it on radio, so you really gotta put an effort into promoting classical music.

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.

My background in music is classical - I did graduate school in music. At that time, I was studying composition, but I was studying classical guitar very seriously.

If you're walking through the Union Square subway station - New Yorkers know it's obnoxious and crowded, and in the summer it's too hot - there are always amazing musicians playing, and sometimes there are multiple, different musicians set up in there.

With El Sistema, you can create orchestras everywhere; then they can decide whether they want to become professional musicians. The aim is not only to create musicians, but to create people.

I played with so many musicians and some of the musicians would have something I want. I steal a lot of them, and I mash it up, I mash it up into my chords.

Ilaignan,' the script of which has been penned by Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, is a period film that is set in the romantic era of classical music. You will find Western classical music mixed with our Indian melodies.

The reality for me is simple. When music is written, it is usually categorized as classical. When it is improvised, it can still be called classical if it is an inspired improvisation. In either category, it is still music, and it can be good or bad or simply mediocre.

When we improvise freely - that is, without a structure - it tends to sound more like 20th century classical music, more like a classical ensemble improvising, as opposed to a free-jazz group, where you're more used to hearing saxophones honking.

That's for non-musicians to say: "I only listen to this or that type of music." I think musicians love all music, or at least that's my case.

A lot of musicians talk about how they were into music from the start; they always wanted to be musicians. It wasn't like that for me. I didn't think of it as a job or a career - it was just something that was constant.

Why is it that beautiful women never seem to have curiosity? Is it because they know they're classical? With classical things the Lord finished the job. Ordinary ugly people know they're deficient and they go on looking for the pieces.

'The Shining' is operatic and sensational and... really shocking. It has this amazing meld of classical music and modern interpretations of classical music, and incredible imagery. From the set design to the costumes, there's so much to unpack.

I've always said that I count myself as a classical crossover artist. To be so, you have to have the core classical training, which I did for many, many years, but also be interested in the pop side of things. You can fit in somewhere in the middle. I feel I do that really well.

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.

Musicians ought to reclaim some of the power in the houses of production. The opera houses are run either by managers or by stage directors, never by musicians.

I think the musicians I play with solo do a certain thing that the musicians we play with with the Indigo Girls don't do. It's just a different thing. And it sort of steers my writing in some ways.

There is no essential difference between classical and popular music. Music is music. I want to communicate with the listener who finds Indian classical music remote.

I don't like that, because there are a lot of people whose works I admire as actors or actresses, or musicians. And you know, I've been a big fan of different musicians or actors.

I like to play with people who can play simple and are not threatened by other musicians thinking they can't play. And that eliminates 99 percent of the musicians.

Most musicians don't write about being a musician cause most musicians aren't writers.

The best musicians or sound-artists are people who never considered themselves to be artists or musicians.

With pop music and pop musicians, you know everything about everyone all the time, particularly their physical appearance. With female musicians, that's made a big thing of, and I think people, certainly with me, have appreciated a bit of mystery.

It just seems like musicians want to sell a few records and put out a perfume line, and I think it's so sad that there are so many musicians who don't want to change the world.

Usually people think that it is the musicians who create the music, but in fact it is music who creates the musicians.

We have been working with Habitat for Humanity and we have built eighty homes, 80% of which are being lived in by New Orleans' musicians. It is called the Musicians' Village and at the center is the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.

I think that there are some fantastic musicians out there - very, very talented musicians.

One of the things that's influenced me musically was my experience at Brown University. I was surrounded by musicians that I really admired, and felt challenged to come up with music, lyrics, and recordings that stood up to the expectations of those musicians and myself.

I know a lot of actors who started out as musicians and have very successful careers as actors, but most people don't know them as musicians.

I can't do too much musical movement with a lot of MC's, because they don't know how to follow me. But with Souls of Mischief, I could go anywhere because they are musicians - they rap as musicians, and they play instruments and produce, so they get that.

My mother was an opera singer and my grandmother a concert pianist, and they only liked classical music. If I put on a pop record, they would tell me to turn it off, so I only listen to classical.

We are all musicians, and we're not really good musicians. But we have this gracious gift that has been bestowed on us, and we don't want to disappoint. So I guess our biggest fear would be, just giving up.

Classical music only really came into my life in 1969. I wish I had heard classical music and church music when I was a teenager or even as a child.

What is the source of power of musicians who are financially browbeaten, most of whom work for minimum wage or less? Musicians who cannot even afford to buy tickets to operas or concerts in which they themselves perform?

As a professional cellist, I go to mostly classical concerts because that's the music I play, but I am also always trying to find out who the voices of our time are. I attend a spectrum of concerts that are close to classical - anything from Wynton Marsalis to Renee Fleming.

I think for a classical musician the goal is the same as an electronic musician. A very good professional classical musician must not think about technique.

I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.

I'm often surprised by classical music and musicians. I've met a large number of them because my wife works for the Boston Symphony, and I'm in that world a lot now. I'm surprised at how difficult it is for people who are classically trained to read music or to memorize music, how difficult it is for them to improvise, to just go off and play. It's sort of, it's like terra incognita. They just, (makes noise) they don't get it.

Maybe one way I am original is that at heart I really am a classical actor. I haven't had my chance yet in the commercial world to show that. Movies aren't really made about classical people so much any more.

I'm not a classical player. I don't want to be a classical player. I love to improvise, because things happen that never happen anywhere else.

Great musicians are great musicians, whether they're playing a trombone or an electric guitar or a xylophone.

History's most treasured musicians were believed in and cultivated to reach their potential. Today, it would be difficult for those musicians to get deals. We have the insight and the tools to identify and bring to fruition the dormant talent that our artists possess.

Theoretical physicists live in a classical world, looking out into a quantum-mechanical world. The latter we describe only subjectively, in terms of procedures and results in our classical domain.

Reps once took chances on art, History's most treasured musicians were believed in and cultivated to reach their potential. Today, it would be difficult for those musicians to get deals.

Outside India, Chris Brown, Bruno Mars, Beyonce, and Rihanna are my favourites. I also like Justin Bieber. I like Western jazz and pop. Been a classical singer, I have sung a song 'Auliya,' a fusion of Western and Indian classical.

I basically love classical music. I love a lot of musicians playing together and the whole culture of that whether it's Indian or it's Western. But in India, I think it's limited to filler music unfortunately. That's one thing I want to push in India where we have the infrastructure of an orchestra where you play Indian melodies with an orchestra and something different for a universal audience. It requires a lot of work from me.

Rock musicians, and a vast array of popular-music musicians, due to their wealth, acquired through the mass of their notoriety, are able to be listened to and heard and thus are able to effect change on an international level.