My own mother, my sister and nearly all the women in my family had full-time jobs as mothers. They were wonderful at it. They drove their children back and forth to soccer, skating lessons, piano lessons, private schools, but I sensed, even in my own mother, a kind of distant dissatisfaction.
I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.
Among my European ancestors were piano builders, goldsmiths, and vintners but, to the best of my knowledge, no professionals of any kind.
My daughter is one of my greatest inspirations. She's an environmentalist, she plays piano, she's raising money for the earthquake victims in Nepal. Every day she surprises me and teaches me something.
All the things you put off, like learning to play the piano or leaning a different language? You're like, what's the point? I'm not really gonna do that, am I?
I could hear my friends outside playing soccer while I was expected to stay inside practicing the piano. It was like torture!
I was a halfway-decent-looking English boy who looked nice in a drawing-room standing by a piano.
Here I am, a not over-good business man, a second-rate engineer. I can make poor mechanical drawings. I play the piano after a fashion. In fact, I am one of those proverbial Jack-of-all-trades who are usually failures. Why I am not, I can't tell you.
I learned music from a book on piano theory. I was only interested in knowing about chords. From that, and from the 'Harvard Dictionary of Music,' I learned everything I wanted to know.
I have always wanted to learn the piano, but because I travel so much, I can never get any consistency of lessons. So everywhere I go, if I can find a piano, even if it is in the lobby of a hotel or something, I go on YouTube and pick some songs to learn.
I sit around for ages waiting for inspiration. Then when I get an idea, I want to go with it and get something as quickly as possible. It's like catching a fly in a bottle. I'll play with drums for a bit, then the piano for a bit, play the guitar.
The first thing I learned was the 'St Louis Blues' when I was eight. Both my grandmothers, my mother and uncle played the piano. This was post-war Britain, and they played boogie woogie and blues, which was the underground music of the time.
I liken movies to playing a piano: Sometimes you're playing the chords and different notes with unresolved cadences and playing all major chords that are all over the place, and you're enjoying yourself with a great, simple melody.
After I learned the piano, I went on to learn percussion, the tuba, b-flat baritone, French horn, trombone, trumpet, most of the instruments in the orchestra. Trumpet was my instrument.
The first music-learning thing that I took seriously was piano lessons when I was a kid. I guess that was probably the only time that I was forced to perform music, because I had piano recitals, and my school also had mandatory music classes that had some performing required.
I had piano lessons when I was a kid, like most people. And hated them, like most people. And quit, like most people.
Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you don't feel the effort of the author, so that they shine and bubble and rise and fall, is very, very hard to do. Whereas you can sit at the piano and just play and feel you're making art.
I was much more interested in the orchestra than the piano, but I did become fairly proficient as a pianist and my teachers felt I had talent and wanted me to become a good concert pianist and earn my living that way.
I wanted to play piano in restaurants in the south of France. I went there on holiday once and I saw this guy playing in an old tuxedo. He was all disheveled, with a whisky glass on the piano. I thought that was the coolest thing. So what's happened to me with 'Twilight' isn't really what I'd planned.
Frankie Muniz is amazing at everything he does. Many people don't know that he can play the piano like you wouldn't believe, and he can bowl and play basketball like you wouldn't believe.
Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.
Playing the piano is incredibly personal... But when it's your own piece, it's doubly so.
I started playing guitar when I was eight. Well, I started piano and really liked it but never practiced, but it taught me how to read music, and then my mom signed me up for guitar lessons, and I connected to that way more.
I've played every instrument you could possibly think of for 10 minutes. So I'm mediocre at everything. I can play drums, guitar, piano, violin, saxophone, clarinet, flute... Just not well.
All of my kids are into music. My older daughter plays guitar, piano, sings. My young son, he sings.
Piano should be the one. Yeah, because that's your basis. Everything is right there in front of you.
I love music, singing, and playing piano (though I'm not very good). And I adore musical theater.
I love New Orleans. I love jazz. I grew up practicing jazz piano, and that's just been such a cool genre to me. There's a lot of talent there.
I have two extraordinary daughters, who, I can say proudly, are doing very well in school and in piano. Daughters are a father's joy.
I learned to read music when I was 10 and did piano and took lessons.
I'm endorsed by Yamaha. I represent Yamaha, and I really like the way that piano handles and capacitates the force that I put into it without losing the shape of the sound and the contour, and it really holds up well.
I still will sit down at the piano and play when I am wrestling with something emotionally or just want to move into the musical world.
I was always very leery of my piano playing. As a young kid, I wanted to be a jazz musician, but my taste was far greater than my ability.
With 'Bright Star' and with 'The Piano,' too, I felt a kind of sadness about it being in such a different era, because of my lack of experience with the era. And one of the ways I'd get over it is to remind myself that every film, even if it's contemporary, creates its own world.
I've always loved French music. My parents adored it; my father played it on the piano.
I've been working on something, just some jazz, relaxed stuff. It will be standard, just piano and voice. It started out as a fun project for me though, I'm still not sure about releasing it.
