My musical director, Mark Cherry, is the most wonderful person who ever lived on God's good green Earth. He's my director, he does the arrangements. Really, he does everything - including certain janitorial chores!
No change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to.
I think it's his perception of knowing how to make a record build, keeping the integrity of the song in the music and really adding a lot of musical elements to compliment my voice and to compliment the song.
People who take risks like Amy Winehouse and Norah Jones take a second to catch on, but eventually they do because they're different and honest in a musical landscape that's not always like that.
When I was in my teens, I thought, 'Would I like to try and work hard at being an actor, or do I want to work hard at doing something musical?' Acting won out, but I do really enjoy those moments where I get to just belt something out.
I've dreamt of being in a movie musical for a long time. For some reason I never even thought 'Les Mis' would be possible.
I usually start from the most general to the more specific. I'll get an emotional overview for the film as a whole, trying to pinpoint what the musical identity is and come up with thematic ideas - any ideas that identify as succinctly as possible what the film is.
What's missing in the musical theater is producers willing to nurture new work, raise the money and put it on.
I marched back then - I was in a civil-rights musical, Fly Blackbird, and we met Martin Luther King.
So what I'm trying to say is from a musical aspect for anybody to say that whatever they're doing in Florida is not Hip Hop or whatever they're doing in LA is not Hip Hop, who are these people to say that?
It's clear on the one hand that an education enriches and informs a response to beauty, even makes it possible in esoteric cases. On the other hand, there's no question that someone with no musical education whatsoever might wander into a concert hall and be overwhelmed by the 'Beethoven Pastoral Symphony'.
That's the kind of musical freedom I like: jazz, rock, blues, anything. You adopt different attitudes when you play different music.
I can understand why guys wouldn't be into 'Glee.' You know, that's a pretty heavy musical show. That show does, like, six songs in an episode.
I'm lucky to come from a very musical family. If you put a record on and turn the volume up, there's a pretty good chance you'll have a lot of people dancing very quickly.
I want to be in a musical. I love music, and just to be able to mash the music and the acting together, it would be just incredible.
I was never on the side of the teachers at school. Even though I put all the work into getting the main role in the end-of-year musical when I was 11, they didn't give it me, even though they knew I should have had it. That sort of drove me into am dram and getting the main part in another production. And I did.
I have no restrictions, no limits, no musical history to live with.
I was in California, and I was going to UCLA, and I knew I certainly didn't have movie star looks. I remember seeing pictures and photos of Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, who were kind of average looking. I said, 'Well, that's for me, then, to go back to New York and try to be in musical comedy on Broadway.'
What gets people into trouble with records now is that they want to build something up without substantial musical ideas. Without that as a foundation, you can add all the layers of sound you want - it's still going to sound like a mess.
We've got to find a way to protect the process of making musical theater.
I always try to think of a vocabulary to match different musical situations.
I would love to do a big-budget movie musical - I feel like there is one big musical movie a year. And I'm always there at the theater to see them - I love them.
I have been portrayed by actors in three television documentaries, two plays, one musical and a film. It's no fun watching yourself being traduced and imitated by an actor.
I'm very influenced by landscapes, not so much the way places look as the way the names sound. In this country we've got so many cultures, and the place names - the Spanish names and the Indian names, which are so incredibly musical.
I remember Tim telling me that he had an idea for a musical and he said to me that he was hoping that ABBA would be writing the music, which I thought was a pretty wild idea because they were obviously known very much as pop writers.
I was put on so many different musical stages growing up that I didn't think about what kind of music we played. I just thought music was music.
I like to work with artists who are as wide in their musical taste as I am.
I am musical and I enjoy theatre, but I never wanted to just do theatre. I always wanted to go into film. I love film. I loved growing up in the theatre, but I always wanted to do film all along. But, I still pursue music separately.
My musical taste is somewhat dated - I mean, freeze frame, go back 60 years, and you're in my comfort zone.
I never played a musical instrument growing up but I knew kids who did and took it very seriously.
I actually think that I'm a genius; not to toot my own horn or anything, but I think I'm a musical genius.
All my momma's people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.
I've always loved musical theater. It's a bit of a family tradition.
If I made a musical in the beginning of my career, it would have been crane shots and tracking shots and people coming out of cakes and whatever, but these techniques are something that I've left behind me.
In 1969, I wrote a musical called 'Mother Earth.' It was a rock musical with an ecology theme. We did it at the South Coast Repertory Theatre in Southern California where I was a member. It was a smash hit in this small theater.
I was always musical - yelling when I was a baby, singing into a brush and singing in the shower.
