I want people to say about me, 'I know he's making music because he loves it.'
Modern recording has made it so that people can spend forever taking shortcuts and making everything uniform, but that strips music of what makes it exciting.
I spend a lot of time copying saxophone players and trumpet players. Not to say that it is not important to listen to guitar players, but there's so much music out there and so many possibilities. I like anyone who plays any instrument.
There's always so much more that can be conveyed on screen visually in the expressions of people's faces, in their bodies, in their body language. And also with sound design, with music.
I feel that after all those horrible reviews and jokes, I wasn't crazy all these years to stand up for the music I believe in. This album has proven that somewhere in the human race, the human heart is still racing and breaking and I am so grateful.
Mostly I've never let record companies become involved with my music, which was a very smart thing that my first manager Dave Robinson did, to keep them out of it.
The New York City Ballet is always about the realm of possibilities, the realm of what the human body can do, what the human spirit can do. And it's about listening, it's about listening to remarkable music and how we respond to that.
All the rappers in rave music are like the sloppy seconds of rappers who couldn't make it.
Even if the music industry simply gave away all their music people would complain that they don't have the bandwidth to download all the stuff - the problem would merely shift from availability to distribution.
Opera tells stories through the pure emotion of music. An exhibition has to tell a story purely visually. I've tried to incorporate both of those things - pure emotion and being more visual - into my writing.
It's always the music first for me. But if the music isn't selling, there isn't gonna be no business. So you gotta make sure music is always the first priority.
I was always kind of against streaming, but I've been traveling so much, and I usually carry a huge hard drive of digital music with me, but I haven't had time to deal with it, so I've been doing streaming. And I had this incredible breakthrough of weightlessness where I've really been loving streaming music.
As a youngster, I never dreamed there could be a career actually earning a living writing music.
I think, for one thing, all of us remember those teenage years and those songs that we fell in love with and the music scene that we were part of. So, in a certain way, music cuts through time like almost nothing else. You know, it makes us feel like we're back in an earlier moment.
Obviously the people that I admired, like the Beatles, were really into rock'n'roll, but it was already a little past rock'n'roll when I started listening and making my own choices about music.
Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.
I love everything from country to alternative to Blink-182 and '90s music to Dave Matthews.
Music used to change people's minds - and it still changes mine.
To me, if you're a musician, then you're interested in music, and if you're interested in music, then you should listen to a lot of different types.
I know my music probably isn't going to matter to the public after I die, but that doesn't mean I don't have something to offer.
As a professional cellist, I go to mostly classical concerts because that's the music I play, but I am also always trying to find out who the voices of our time are. I attend a spectrum of concerts that are close to classical - anything from Wynton Marsalis to Renee Fleming.
There's not a lot of music videos that are totally, totally disturbing.
If it helped you get your music off the ground, I'm glad you done it.
I'd just like to inspire people to be themselves and do what they want and not conform to the rigid guidelines of the music or entertainment business.
There are Latino people in our world who believe strongly that if you are Latino you should speak the language, you should eat the food, you should listen to the music, you should be proud. And when you don't do those things, some people will look at it as if you're neglecting who you are.
Music for me is a bit more spiritual. There are moments when I'm sitting at my piano, and I don't realize that I've been playing for two hours - it feels like divine power. I know it's so cheesy.
As a songwriter, it's very hard to listen to music that's not coming from the heart and soul, personally.
Imagery is like music.
The country experience was more of a departure. When you consider my education and my upbringing, you can see that was more of country rock outgrowth of my popular music aspirations.
In Montreal, there is a friend of mine at school who is a jazz pianist with an amazing voice, and we sort of have this fusion/soul/R&B/folk music kind of thing. We've been keeping it low-key and opening for some friends.
We've made elevator music of Jesus Christ. We've made Him the most boring, bland, blah person; and He was the most revolutionary man.
And of course there's so much music in and around our family. I had a piano during Christmas because it's obviously useful through the season. There are so many people, songwriters, who are around.
When recordings replaced concerts as the dominant mode of hearing music, our conception of the nature of performance and of music itself was altered.
I was a music fan first way before I started creating it, so I still get giddy when I get to be around people that I respect so much.
I think that the jazzy approach that I have is based on the way that I hear music and in the way I play a supporting role to the other people in the band.
Miles Davis was doing something inherently African, something that has to do with all forms of American music, not just jazz.
