Quotes about musician
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Hariprasad Chaurasia photo
Jerry Cantrell photo

“When asked if he gets advice from other musicians, quoted in”

Jerry Cantrell (1966) American musician and songwriter

https://www.loudersound.com/features/heroes-villains-jerry-cantrell, Heroes & Villains: Jerry Cantrell, Louder Sound, July 16, 2014

“These differences can make it difficult for female musicians to enter male-dominated musical cultures.”

Holly Kruse (1999). Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture, pg. 94. Malden, Massachusetts. ISBN 0631212639.

Osvaldo Pugliese photo
Arthur Rubinstein photo
Carlo Carrà photo
Roger Ebert photo
Sarah Chang photo
Joanna MacGregor photo
David Oistrakh photo
Ralph Ellison photo

“Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.”

Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer

"The Essential Ellison", interview by Ishmael Reed in Y'Bird 1, no. 1 (1978): 130-59.

Zakir Hussain (musician) photo
Daniel Levitin photo
Gangubai Hangal photo
Harry Chapin photo
Henry More photo
Hariprasad Chaurasia photo

“My favourite musician happens to be the same as Shakespeare's: John Dowland. His songs are sorrowful but heal the soul by their sweetness and courage.”

John Dowland (1563–1626) English Renaissance composer, lutenist, and singer

Robert Graves, letter to Idries Shah, September 6, 1968; published in Between Moon and Moon: Selected Letters of Robert Graves 1946-1972, (1984), p. 272.
Criticism

Gloria Estefan photo

“This blend of musicians on '90 Millas' is historically significant on a number of levels. This is the first and quite possibly the last time that all of these legendary artists will play together on one CD.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

orlandosentinel.com -- exerpt from Burgundy Records announcement of '90 Millas' (August 10, 2007)
2007, 2008

M. Balamuralikrishna photo
John Cale photo

“I'm bent on proving that you can make living as musician and not die young and crazy like Mozart.”

John Cale (1942) Welsh composer, singer-songwriter and record producer

Attributed without citation at John Cale - Quotes, xs4all.nl, 16 November 2012 http://werksman.home.xs4all.nl/cale/quotes/index.html,

Richard Strauss photo

“Anybody who wants to be a real musician must be able to set a menu to music.”

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) German composer and orchestra director

Other sources

A. R. Rahman photo
Scott Joplin photo

“What is scurrilously called ragtime is an invention that is here to stay. That is now conceded by all classes of musicians.”

Scott Joplin (1868–1917) American composer, musician, and pianist

"School of Ragtime" (1908)

Howard Roberts photo
Gloria Estefan photo

“Getting this caliber of musicians together [for "90 Millas" CD in September of 2007] is almost impossible to do again.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

Emilio Estefan, Reuters (July 23, 2007)
2007, 2008

Joanna MacGregor photo
Dana Gioia photo
Maia Mitchell photo

“I love people and people watching. I love music. I am intrigued by musicians more than I am actors. I have a bigger respect for them.”

Maia Mitchell (1993) Australian actress

As quoted in "Maia Mitchell: My Audition For ‘The Fosters’ Was ‘Crap’" by Sean Daly at The TV Page (20 January 2014) I'm sexy.

Andrew Sega photo
Mick Jagger photo

“There's not many Americans, certainly not many of the teenagers I met when I first went to America, knew anything about [blues musicians] at all. … They do now, which is very groovy.”

Mick Jagger (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

Pop Chronicles: Show 30 - The British Are Coming! The British Are Coming!: The U.S.A. is invaded by a wave of long-haired English rockers. (Part 4) http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19785/m1/ interviewed 2.6.1968 https://archive.is/ty0cr.

Alexandre Dumas, fils photo

“It is possible to become a painter, a sculptor, or a musician by study, but not a dramatic poet; a man is so either at once or never, as he is blonde or brown, and cannot help it.”

Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824–1895) French writer and dramatist, son of the homonym writer and dramatist

On peut devenir un peintre, un sculpteur, un musicien même à force d'étude; on ne devient pas un auteur dramatique. On l'est tout de suite ou jamais, comme on est blond ou brun, sans le vouloir.
Preface to Le Père Prodigue (1859), in Théatre complet de Al. Dumas fils (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1868-98) vol. 3, p. 199; translation by E. P. Evans from The Atlantic Monthly, May 1890, pp. 584-5.

Rollo May photo
John Dewey photo
Jane Monheit photo
Brian Wilson photo
Anne Murray photo

“I hated my life when I was going through those early days and having to deal with drunken musicians and drugged musicians. I hated it.”

Anne Murray (1945) Canadian singer

On her early career in the 1960s, as quoted in "Anne Murray says farewell with All of Me", CBC Arts, CBC.ca, 29 October 2009 https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/anne-murray-says-farewell-with-all-of-me-1.806879

Ian Anderson photo

“I don't think it's very easy to make friends with musicians. We're all a bit paranoid. It soon becomes very heavy.”

Ian Anderson (1947) Scottish musician, leader of Jethro Tull

[John, Tobler, 1992, NME Rock 'N' Roll Years, 1st, Reed International Books Ltd, London, 272, CN 5585]

Arthur Sullivan photo

“The theatre is not the place for the musician. When the curtain is up the music interrupts the actor, and when it is down the music interrupts the audience.”

Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) English composer of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

Quoted in The Musical Times, February 1909; cited from Percy A. Scholes The Mirror of Music, 1844-1944 (London: Novello, 1947) vol. 1, p. 267.

Robert Fripp photo
Ralph Vaughan Williams photo
Shawn Lane photo
Ravi Shankar photo

“Most marijuana smokers are colored people, jazz musicians, and entertainers. Their satanic music is driven by marijuana, and marijuana smoking by white women makes them want to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others. It is a drug that causes insanity, criminality, and death — the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”

Harry J. Anslinger (1892–1975) 1st Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics

As quoted in Legalizing Marijuana : Drug Policy Reform and Prohibition Politics‎ (2004) by Rudolph Joseph Gerber, p. 9; also in Hawking Hits on the Information Highway : The Challenge of Online Drug Sales for Law Enforcement (2008) by Laura L. Finley , p. 28, and "The Emperor Wears No Clothes: The Authoritative Historical Record of Cannabis and the Conspiracy Against Marijuana" (1994) by Jack Herer, Jeanie Cabarga, and Jeanie Herer, p. 29.
Disputed

Pierre Boulez photo

“[A]ny musician who has not experienced - I do not say understood, but truly experienced - the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch.”

Pierre Boulez (1925–2016) French composer, conductor, writer, and pianist

Emphasis in the original. From "Eventuellement..." (1952), translated as "Possibly..." in Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 113. ISBN 0193112108

Aaron Copland photo
Gloria Estefan photo

“My family was musical on both sides. My father's family had a famous flautist and a classical pianist. My mother won a contest to be Shirley Temple's double -- she was the diva of the family. At 8, I learned how to play guitar. I used to play songs from the '20s, '30s and '40s in the kitchen for my grandmother. After my dad was a prisoner in Cuba for two years, we moved to Texas, where I was the only Hispanic in the class. I remember hearing "Ferry Cross the Mersey," by Gerry and the Pacemakers, and thinking, "that had bongos and maracas -- that was really a bolero." And the Beathles song, "Till There was You"… also Latin. I wrote poetry, which got me into lyrics. Stevie Wonder, Carole King, Elton John pulled me into pop. I started singing with a band -- just for fun -- when I 17. And pretty soon, I was thinking I could sing pop in English as well as Spanish. And as you know, we did that and we broke through. But we waited until 1993 to release "Mi Tierra" -- we wanted my fans to be rady for the traditional Cuban music. And then we kept adding: more Cuban influences, more Latin America. And, underneath it all, African drums and rhythm. The concept of "90 Millas" starts with the songs of the '40s. We invited 25 masters of Latin music -- giants on the cutting edge of creativity, musicians who pushed it out to the world, young Cuban artists and Puerto Ricans who are huge -- so we could blend cultures and generations. So it is like coming home, but not exactly to the old Cuba.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

www.huffingtonpost.com (September 7, 2007)
2007, 2008

Basil of Caesarea photo
Diogenes of Sinope photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Yehudi Menuhin photo
Michael Savage photo

“I intend to make this day forward the first day of the rest of my life. We can change our lives. You say, 'Well, what's wrong with your life, Michael?' Well, it's not that there's anything wrong with my life, but it's not what I want it to be. I don't feel that I'm inspiring people in the way I want to inspire them. You see, you can inspire through hate; you can inspire through love, hope, humor – the positives. I look at the history of the world, and I look at the world today, and I realize that if we don't inspire each other through positive attributes – love, hope and humor – we're gonna descend into the barbarism of the Left and the barbarism of ISIS. You like me to be hard, you like me to be tough, you like me to give you the breaking news, you like me to be cynical, you like me to analytical, you like me to give you stuff that you don't hear anywhere else – I get that. But there's a limit to that. There's a lot of area beyond all that.I think of Christmas. Christianity is the religion of peace. Christianity is the true religion of peace. 'Turn the other cheek.' 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' These are messages that come from Christianity. What can you do in an age of deceit and lies and terror? You can go to church again. However un-needing you think you really are, you know in your heart that there's something missing in you. You know that you crave something greater. Because the human being is not a dog. We are unique creatures. And we need something different than the bear, the dog, the snake and the eagle. What is that thing that we need? It's that 'thing' called God.The media has promulgated the idea, and promoted the idea, that we only need food and fornication. And so when people are empty that's what they seek. And when they are really empty, what happens? They become drug addicts. They start with marijuana, they end up with heroin, crack, you name it. As God has been driven out of America, drugs have entered America. What does an empty soul look to do? An empty soul looks to fill itself. Just as an empty vessel needs to be filled with a liquid to be complete, an empty human being needs to fill itself to be complete. And how does it fill itself? I know, again, many of you will laugh because you're cynical; it's through those things I'm talking about – inspiration. Do you think a musician can play one day without inspiration from somewhere? The greatest artists in the history of the world were not drug-addicts. They were usually God-addicts. Look at the greatest art in history, you'll find most of them were super religious people, who literally saw God in their living room, and they took the power of God and that was transmitted through the paintbrush, or through that piece of marble. How could a man like Rodin take a piece of inert stone, and inside that stone see the essence of the human form, and sculpt from that block of inert stone, a marble, the portrait of a human being that looks so real – a hundred years later I go and look at them in the museum, and literally inside that carved eye I can see the person; how is that possible? How? It's a different show than I've ever done in my 21 years, because each day to me – I must tell you – I see as my last day, my last day on Earth.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015

Joanna MacGregor photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Steve Jobs photo

“Jobs: Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields. We all brought to this a sort of “liberal arts” air, an attitude that we wanted to pull the best that we saw into this field. You don’t get that if you are very narrow.
Cringley: How does the Web affect the economy?
Jobs: We live in an information economy. The problem is that information's usually impossible to get, at least in the right place, at the right time. The reason Federal Express won over its competitors was its package-tracking system. For the company to bring that package-tracking system onto the Web is phenomenal. I use it all the time to track my packages. It's incredibly great. Incredibly reassuring. And getting that information out of most companies is usually impossible.
But it's also incredibly difficult to give information. Take auto dealerships. So much money is spent on inventory—billions and billions of dollars. Inventory is not a good thing. Inventory ties up a ton of cash, it's open to vandalism, it becomes obsolete. It takes a tremendous amount of time to manage. And, usually, the car you want, in the color you want, isn't there anyway, so they've got to horse-trade around. Wouldn't it be nice to get rid of all that inventory? Just have one white car to drive and maybe a laserdisc so you can look at the other colors. Then you order your car and you get it in a week.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Robert X. Cringley for a Public Broadcasting System [PBS] television series, “Triumph of the Nerds” (1995), “The Lost Interview: Steve Jobs Tells Us What Really Matters” https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/17/the-lost-interview-steve-jobs-tells-us-what-really-matters/#5cb0fc8e6c3a, Forbes, Steve Denning, Nov 17, 2011,
1990s

“In my poetry, I am just as influenced by musicians or composers. As I am by people who create with words.”

Jan Zwicky (1955) Canadian philosopher

Griffin Prize Questionnaire June 2012
Griffin Poetry Prize Questionnaire

Newton Lee photo
M. Balamuralikrishna photo
Gilberto Gil photo

“Like most artists and musicians, I considered myself detached from the political life…but I had an insight that maybe we would have a political contribution to make in the future.”

Gilberto Gil (1942) Brazilian singer, guitarist, songwriter and politician

[Oliver, Burkeman, http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1592188,00.html, Minister of counterculture, The Guardian, Guardian Media Group, 2005-10-14]

Noel Gallagher photo

“There is a limited supply of excellent songs, but I am not the only one. Paul McCartney, one of the best songwriters of all time, has only produced manure for the past 25 years. Rock musicians over 30 only produce unimportant material.”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Noel Gallagher cited in ‘Sir Paul has just written manure for years’ http://www.scotsman.com/what-s-on/music/sir-paul-has-just-written-manure-for-years-1-611044 at scotsman.com, originally published 2 July 2002 (see here http://www.scotsman.com/what-s-on/music/sir-paul-has-just-written-manure-for-years-1-611044)
Controversy with other artists

Honoré de Balzac photo

“Music is of two kinds: one petty, poor, second-rate, never varying, its base the hundred or so phrasings which all musicians understand, a babbling which is more or less pleasant, the life that most composers live.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Il y a deux musiques: une petite, mesquine, de second ordre, partout semblable à elle-même, qui repose sur une centaine de phrases que chaque musicien s'approprie, et qui constitue un bavardage plus ou moins agréable avec lequel vivent la plupart des compositeurs.
Massimilla Doni http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Massimilla_Doni (1839), translated by Clara Bell and James Waring

Joe Zawinul photo
Reese Witherspoon photo
A. R. Rahman photo

“I think musicians here [India] get ripped off. Music production houses take good care of artists abroad and though the upfront signing amount is much less than what I get here, the royalty takes care of future returns.”

A. R. Rahman (1966) Indian singer and composer

In A R Rahman: Composing a winning score, 21 September 2002, 16 December 2013, Rediff.com http://www.rediff.com/money/2002/sep/21bizsp.htm,

Anthony Kiedis photo
Zakir Hussain (musician) photo
Patrick Stump photo

“I get really annoyed with photo shoots and interviews and handshakes. I’m a musician; God forbid I actually have time to make music.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

Blender Magazine, "Boy Crazy" Article- June, 2006
Source: http://www.blender.com/guide/articles.aspx?id=1927

John McLaughlin photo
Neil deGrasse Tyson photo
Joanna MacGregor photo
Andrew Sega photo

“I think as a musician you really have to have a wide variety of tastes, or else you will unconsciously get into a rut.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Connexion Bizarre interview with Iris, 2009 http://www.connexionbizarre.net/interviews/iris-an-interview-with-andrew-sega-and-reaganjones

Richard Rodríguez photo
Irene Dunne photo

“Mother, an accomplished musician, taught me to play the piano as a very small girl.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

Hats, Hunches And Happiness (1945)

Tom Waits photo

“(When asked for advice for younger musicians) "Break windows, smoke cigars, and stay up late. Tell 'em to do that, they'll find a little pot of gold."”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

<i>Musician</i> magazine, October 1987.

Miles Davis photo
Osvaldo Pugliese photo
Howard Zinn photo
Roger Ebert photo
Andrew Sega photo
Isadora Duncan photo

“Love is not the sacred thing that poets talk about … Love is an illusion; it is the world's greatest mistake. I ought to know for I've been loved as no other woman of my time has been loved. Men have threatened suicide, they have taken poison, they have fought duels for me. All kinds have come to me — geniuses, poets, millionaires, artists, musicians — but now there is not one to whom I have appealed for the loan of £25 who have responded.
There is love for you!”

Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American dancer and choreographer

As quoted in A Century of Sundays : 100 years of Breaking News in the Sunday Papers (2006) by Nadine Dreyer, p. 65 http://books.google.com/books?id=5rFGX4z8-S8C&pg=PA65&dq=%22Love+is+an+illusion;+it+is+the+world's+greatest+mistake%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NPAkT7mJDJKy0AH5vcXkCA&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Love%20is%20an%20illusion%3B%20it%20is%20the%20world's%20greatest%20mistake%22&f=false

“Conducting is the sound of a musician who makes no sound.”

Adrian Leaper (1953) British conductor

The Hindu, Magazine section, October 19, 2008. http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/10/19/stories/2008101950060200.htm

Łukasz Pawlikowski photo

“…Another highlight of the festival was the performance of the Alchemy Trio in the Tempel Synagogue. That's a great cracovian cellist Dorota Imiełowska with accordion wizard Konrad Ligas and equally sensational bassist Roman Ślazyk. With musicians performed 16-year-old Łukasz Pawlikowski of which can confidently say that he has joined the ranks of the best Polish cellists. Jewish music they played (even in their own arrangement) enchanted, deeply touched and amused, because this music is not only an emotional but also full of humor. It was not just a concert - artists presented musical and theatrical spectacle. Excellent!”

Łukasz Pawlikowski (1997) Polish cellist

...Kolejnym wydarzeniem festiwalu był występ Alchemy Trio w Synagodze Tempel. To znakomita krakowska wiolonczelistka Dorota Imiełowska z czarodziejem akordeonu Konradem Ligasem i równie rewelacyjnym kontrabasistą Romanem Ślazykiem. Z muzykami wystapił 16-letni Łukasz Pawlikowski, o którym śmiało można powiedzieć, że już dołączył do grona najlepszych polskich wiolonczelistów. Muzyka żydowska, którą grali / również we własnej aranżacji/ zachwycała, wzruszała i bawiła, bo to muzyka nie tylko niezwykle emocjonalna, ale i pełna humoru. To był nie tylko koncert - artyści zaprezentowali spektakl muzyczno-teatralny. Rewelacja!
[Beata Penderecka, http://www.radiokrakow.pl/www/index.nsf/ID/BPEA-9AZLHZ, Cellos on Music in Old Cracow, Radio Kraków, 2013-28-08, Polish]
About

Ernest Hemingway photo
Hermann Göring photo
Joanna MacGregor photo
Frances Bean Cobain photo
Robert Fripp photo
Mark Heard photo

“I am apt to hire musicians sometimes because I know they will have some good jokes to tell.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Life in the Industry: A Musician's Diary