I like - I actually love classical music very much.
I like classical music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and I adore Bach above all.
It's something he used to say when he was happy. It could be a very, very simple day. We might be sitting out on the front lawn. Dad loved classical music and we might be listening to some Stravinsky or something and having some tea and eggs. And he'd say, 'Oh, good stuff, isn't it?'
I grew up listening to - it's kind of embarrassing - all classical music.
Some musicians play blues, others classical jazz or bluegrass. I like to play political roles because I can merge my political interests with my creative interests.
I'm not a really good classical guitarist by any means, but what I learned from this is a way of working very slowly on solo pieces and I enjoyed working on these pieces of John's. They were not written for solo guitar but a lot of them were easy to adapt.
My parents were decent, aspirant first-generation middle class. They read 'Reader's Digest', listened to classical music; my grandparents had a bust of Stalin on the mantelpiece. The kids of that generation were terrified of being below par, class-wise.
I fell in love with funk music through my father - Funkadelic - as well as soul and classical early on.
When classical singers or dancers look at cinema with derision, I have half a heart to tell them that they're wrong. They're losing a platform.
I found the blues too limiting, and classical was too disciplined.
If had to label myself, I guess classical liberal would be best.
One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name.
I have observed, too, that the people of the many countries that I have visited are showing an ever increasing interest in the classical and traditional music of their own cultures.
My mother did play classical piano, not that well. And actually, my father sang with the big bands - he sang with Bob Crosby's band - but he had to give up show business when his father died. He had to come back to Montgomery and take over the furniture store.
I wasn't even a theater kid in high school. I studied classical piano, and I ran track.
Oh, stuff the critics. I don't care. Too many people are snooty about classical. Look, I wasn't brought up in a home where we listened to classical music. It was a singing teacher that thought it would be best for my voice. Then I moved into crossover. And if that makes the music accessible to more people, then great.
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.
I loved 'Fantasia' as a kid because it filled me with wonder, enchantment and awe. It was my first real introduction into classical music. It was totally inspiring to me.
I listened to classical music. I listened to jazz. I listened to everything. And I started becoming interested in the sounds of jazz. And I went to a concert of Jazz at the Philharmonic when we lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and I saw Charlie Parker play and Billie Holiday sing and Lester Young play, and that did it. I said, 'That's what I want to do.'
I had had a classical education prior to that.
I wanted to be a classical actress. I plodded along. I went to junior college in San Francisco, I was in a Repertory Company. My hero was Eva Le Gallienne, who was a great theater actress at the turn of the century who created her own company, and she wrote these hilarious autobiographies at the time.
I took classical piano for a couple of years, but I sort of lost interest - I couldn't read a note today if I tried. I still enjoy that stuff, and I think I naturally gravitate towards the classical licks; in fact, I know that I do. I gravitate towards the classical licks that I heard by famous old composers.
I listen mostly to classical music.
Some economists believe that the Greeks' work ethic and thrift can pull them through. But the classical virtues can do nothing to offset the dearth of innovation that plagues the economy.
I'm a great believer that actors are very similar to session musicians. You wouldn't ask a session musician, 'How do you play jazz,' and then, 'How do you play classical?' They just do it, because if they don't do it, they don't eat.
Before I was 5, I did have a lot of time on my hands. I had no job and really no career, and I spent an awful lot of time listening to records. It was more the classical ones, really - Prokofiev, and I think there was some Mozart in there, and more impressionistic composers like Delius.
Part of what I enjoy about writing classical music is communicating through the score and collaborating with such amazing musicians.
At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music.
For me, personally, the most interesting music comes from the popular sector - from film and pop music - since contemporary classical music got stuck and went into directions where it lost a lot of the public by over-intellectualizing.
My parents being Bengali, we always had music in our house. My nani was a trained classical singer, who taught my mum, who, in turn, was my first teacher. Later I would travel almost 70 kms to the nearest town, Kota, to learn music from my guru Mahesh Sharmaji, who was also the principal of the music college there.
We're passionate musicians, but we felt classical concerts were more like a funeral because nobody talked and everybody was dressed so conservatively. We thought that's kind of strange, because music is full of life! We thought we could break through that barrier with theater and comedy elements.
Copland was one of the first American composers to forge a truly modern style of American classical music while also making use of American popular music - including jazz.
I've fallen in love with the classical world of imagery, and what I'd like to do now over the last bit of my life is to photograph some nudes.
Classical stuff takes a lot of rehearsal time and preparation, but with stuff that involves improvisation, you can over-rehearse it and it gets stale. You don't want it to be too comfortable. In fact, a good sound check, a good rehearsal usually means a bad performance.
Having started in theatre, for a long time I wanted to be a classical actress. But I've always loved making people laugh - at school, I was quite mischievous, and bit by bit, I found myself working more and more in comedy.
I think doing variations on a classical theme is a dangerous thing to do.
