As far as I was concerned the important thing was that the music was getting the attention as well as me so it was always a great way to get more of the public to connect with classical music, and opera particularly.
I heard Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, and that was it. I didn't ever want to be anything else. I just started banging away and semi-studied classical music at the Royal Academy of Music but sort of half-heartedly.
I also have a big love of classical music played on piano because this is the environment I grew up in my brother being one of the great masters in this world.
Even the most jingoistic person would have to admit that even American cultural music comes from Europe. That's what classical music is, real European music.
We were very rich culturally. One Sunday each month, we would do this thing called Chamber Pots at somebody's house. A classical music group would come over and we'd have dinner. There were thirty people - parents and kids - and we'd sit on the floor and listen to this beautiful music.
It's not that people don't like classical music. It's that they don't have the chance to understand and to experience it.
We need to bring music to the people, even to those who normally do not listen to classical music.
And what classical music does best and must always do more, is to show this kind of transformation of moods, to show a very wide psychological voyage. And I think that's something that we as classical musicians have underestimated.
Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it.
We live in a very chaotic world that sometimes we - it just seems like a mess. One of the reasons why we listen to music, and to great classical music in particular, is that everything is in an order and in a place and has a beauty that you see in nature, that you see and that people look for when they look for God.
It's hard to find an emblem of cultural, national pride that burns as bright as Israel's success in classical music.
I love classical music; I love the way it's worked... all those chord sequences so I often use that sort of effect in my solos.
I had this idea for a while to do mix this Al Green vibe with a samba thing. I tried to do that in many different ways. Peter added his own modern notion of funk and his own deep background in classical music.
It is interesting that our biggest fans are the greatest names of the classical music scene, such as Julian Rachlin, Janine Jansen, Mischa Maisky and Gidon Kremer. They even make guest appearances in our concerts occasionally.
There is a reactionary conservative side of classical music, which is not the most exciting side of it. The side that draws me in, there's a real encouragement of risk-taking, going back to masters of that tradition like Beethoven and Bartok and Stravinsky.
Popularity gets up people's noses. But I understand the importance and the function of popular music. There is an artistic purpose. Popular music helps people to develop a curiosity and leads them towards classical music.
I love... different kinds of music. I like classical music and pop music. I like alternative, and I like rap, hip-hop, and I kind of collected all these things that I love, and they infused my sensibilities, and I just wanted to sing because it felt like it needed to come out of me.
I was born out of classical music.
I didn't grow up with classical music. My father was a folk music singer.
To this day, I adore classical music, and I'm very interested in opera, which I found out later my father was also extremely fond of.
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.
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.
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 listen mostly to classical music.
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.
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.
My husband is a former rocker and in charge of our humungous music collection, and I've recently been asking him for classical music.
I suppose I am more comfortable with jazz because I have been playing it that much longer, and also because classical music is a much more disciplined genre.