Famous Quotes & Sayings

Russell Sherman

To master the piano is to master the universe.

Russell M. Nelson

It really matters what you listen to. . . . Select music that will strengthen your spirit.

Romain Rolland

Everything is music for the born musician.

Rumi

We are as the flute, and the music in us is from thee; we are as the mountain and the echo in us is from thee.

Roy Haynes

Sarah Vaughan was the Charlie Parker of the vocalists during the 1950s.

Roy Haynes

You must own it to play it.

Roy Haynes

There was a lot that was tricky about playing with [Thelonious Monk]. It's a musical language where there's really no lyrics. It's something you feel and you're hearing. It's like an ongoing conversation. You really had to listen to this guy. Cause he could play the strangest tempos, and they could be very in-between tempos on some of those compositions. You really had to listen to his arrangements and the way he would play them. On his solos, you'd really have to listen good in there. You'd have to concentrate on what you were doing as well.

Sufjan Stevens

A musician's attempt to summarize his or her work leads to all this prescriptive chatter, or what I call the 'Modifier's Madness.' A lot of adjectives working overtime.

Sting

I think the labyrinth is an interesting metaphor for our lives as musicians. We're always being drawn toward the center of it because that's where the mystery is. What is music? It's a journey.

Sting

There's no religion but sex and music.

Sting

Yoga introduced me to a style of meditation. The only meditation I would have done before would be in the writing of songs.

Sting

I see music as one language. If one musical form eats its own tail, it dies. So it needs to be a mongrel, it needs to be hybridised.

Sonny Rollins

I'm fortunate that I'm making a living at it now because I'm not equipped to do anything else.

Sonny Rollins

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.

Sonny Rollins

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.

Sonny Rollins

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress...so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

Sonny Rollins

Many jazz artists go to L.A. seeking a more comfortable life and then they really stop playing.

Sonny Rollins

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

Sonny Rollins

I'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

Sonny Rollins

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

Sonny Rollins

I'm not supposed to be playing, the music is supposed to be playing me. I'm just supposed to be standing there with the horn, moving my fingers. The music is supposed to be coming through me; that's when it's really happening.

Sonny Rollins

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.

Sonny Rollins

The thing is this: When I play, what I try to do is to reach my subconscious level. I don't want to overtly think about anything, because you can't think and play at the same time - believe me, I've tried it (laughs).

Sonny Rollins

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

Steve Jobs

It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor.

Steve Earle

Becoming interested in poetics got me interested in theater. Theater is supposed to be poetry, you know, before it's anything else. It just doesn't fly if it isn't musical.

Steve Earle

Part of it is, I think, just to let people know you've got a record out there and that you're still alive requires more work than it used to, because the traditional radio, bug chains of record stores, all of that, that doesn't exist anymore.

Stephen Sondheim

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Molly Ringwald

I like to say, jazz music is kind of like my musical equivalent of comfort food. You know, it's always where I go back to when I just want to feel sort of grounded.

Miranda Cosgrove

I really love music but I've always wanted to act.

Pearl S. Buck

music is not technique and melody, but the meaning of life itself, infinitely sorrowful and unbearably beautiful.

Peter Gabriel

There has always been a strong relationship between music and religion. It is because they both plug directly into the heart and can have real power for good or evil.

Peter Brook

We are aware that the conductor is not really making the music, it is making him -- if he is relaxed, open and attuned, then the invisible will take possession of him; through him, it will reach us.