My father always wanted me to play a musical instrument, and I never had that type of skill.
My true function within a society which embraces all of us is to continue an age-old tradition. This tradition is to create images from the depths of the imagination and to give them form, whether visual, intellectual or musical.
People fall into patterns at fast speeds, when really, to have a clear musical thought - the kind of musical thought that makes a melody work - our brains just can't think that fast. At a certain point, you're going on automatic.
My musical knowledge is so bad it's embarrassing. When composers discuss music with someone as primitive as myself, they have to talk about it in terms of senses and emotion, rather than keys and tempo.
Like, I kind of developed my musical style in a vacuum. Even though I listen to a lot of stuff, the way I wrote was in my bedroom, really privately. It's still the way I write, actually.
Musical practice is too young an art in America to warrant a search for men with a conductor's gift.
Musical theater is one of my passions.
Broadway has changed tremendously from the early days when the shows were referred to as musical comedies. Musical Theater is now a more expanded art form. Back then, singer/actors were not the norm. From the 60's to now, it is necessary to do it all to be a consummate Broadway performer.
I have ambitions to do a Broadway record one of these days and get in the studio with like, a real orchestra. I'm a big musical theatre geek.
I'm not a superstar, per se... but I'm a musical creator - a producer in the same vein as what Quincy Jones was, or Pharrell and Timbaland were.
I just know so many people who have six or seven foreign languages and have read everything and have musical training and they are still dorks.
I want to do a musical movie. Like Evita, but with good music.
I come from a background of experimental music which mingled real sounds together with musical sounds.
I like to work my camera as if it were a musical instrument.
I never thought about becoming a professional singer, but I am in touch with Bono about releasing a musical movie. It will be about an Irish band during the '70s who are looking for fortune in Las Vegas. I should play the singer of the band but I don't want to sing in front of anybody.
So I had to just kind of go back to the hotel, take a shower, sit quiet, dig down deep, warm up, and allow myself to move into some kind of zone. And then I remembered that a lot of my favorite musical moments are not about perfection.
I don't want to do something unproductive with my time, so I decided to do something musical. So it felt good to say, 'Yeah, I'm producing.' It gave me a fresh vibe - inspiring in a different way.
I never learned to verbalize an abstract musical concept. No thank you. The whole point of being a serious musician is to avoid verbalization whenever you can.
Musical accidents are a gold mine. The thing about accidental discoveries is they won't be made unless you put yourself in a position to make that discovery. To do that means hundreds of hours, days and weeks where you do things and don't discover anything.
That was more or less coincidental in the sense that my parents wanted me to come back to New York because that's the center of musical activity still to this day, more or less, and so I auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera.
I know how to make it a great musical. I've got to. It's like I've got to see it on stage.
The most consistent musical experience I had growing up was church music.
I believe I became one of the first singers to be launched via television exposure. I guess I was a new kind of musical stylist for a new kind of media.
My first encounter with a Kelly was not on a musical scale. It was from primary school. Dave and I went to primary school together and we were like boy scouts.
Listen, if you said to me, 'Adam Shankman is going to direct you in a musical and you have six months to learn how to tap,' I'd practice till I was blue in the face. I would do it because I'm so headstrong and think I can do anything. But just to show up and sing a little ditty, no.
I began thinking I would do musical theater because in high school that was really the only sort of curriculum they had as far as getting onstage and doing anything that anybody would see. So that's what I did.
To me, music shouldn't be ego-driven. When you go out on stage and play songs, it is. But when you're sitting in a room, writing songs, it's a completely different process. It's a completely different place. It's a creative place, a musical place. It has nothing to do with who likes what.
I would love to continue working behind the scenes in music - to produce and manage up-and-coming musical talent would be a dream!
The pull between sound and syntax creates a kind of musical tension in the language that interests me.
If my life were a song, what would it be? 'A Never Ending Road of Musical Good Times'.
I knew that I could sing when I was young. I would listen to a lot of jazz; I'm a big jazz fan. When I first got to high school and studied musical theater, I could sing. But I added certain things to my voice, and I realized after graduating high school that this is the kind of voice I had. It's not very nimble, but it's heavy.
To me, the musical is best when it's a musical comedy. So if you have a very, very funny show, and very good, funny songs, that's what the musical does best.
I do like musical films more than big Hollywood films, especially those by Jacques Demi and Vincent Minelli.
I'd love to do a modern-day musical that's full of original music. To get your contemporaries to sing and dance without looking foolish and for it to be transformational and magical and all those things a musical is supposed to be.
The folk music definition has changed in this fast music world and musical styles are blending really quickly.
People who are feeling bullied and people who feel like outsiders should talk to their parents and guardians about finding a place with likeminded people where they can feel accepted. That's what I needed, and that's what I found with musical theater.
