LUDOVICO EINAUDI

You can learn and enrich yourself through the process of knowing a different musical culture.

The London Olympic Opening Ceremony was excellent. The mixture of old and new, of classic and contemporary was a beautiful reflection of Great Britain. Danny Boyle is a genius.

Doing the Five Tibetan Rites exercises every day - it makes me feel at home wherever I am.

It is important that we understand the importance of the Arctic, stop the process of destruction, and protect it.

I think it's normal that for a part of your life you have a lot of questions, and you're interested in all possible theories.

I like to keep changing because discovery is always interesting.

People always talk about the lyrics of Leonard Cohen, but I like his melodies. They are very defined and original.

I wanted to be a rocker and photographer and tour the world!

I have always loved composers who have been connected with folk traditions of popular music.

I couldn't find a way to write music with numbers and rules and schedules. So I tried to forget the academic idea of music and started to see if it was possible to do creative work, taking in all the influences I wanted to keep.

I am very happy to be able to cross borders to go to China, to Mexico, to America, everywhere, and there is an instant understanding of what I do. This is incredibly beautiful because you've suddenly communicated with everyone without speaking the same language. The language of music is able to go anywhere.

Music is an intrinsic part of life; therefore, it is important to transport different forms of artistic expression, science, and mathematics into compositions.

I'm a living composer, so I think I just write and compose the music of my time. I'm not saying that I am better than anyone in the past, but I am saying that I may have evolved some emotions that have connected with the people that are living on the planet today with me.

In a soundtrack, you are in a way always relating with... a combination of different languages. It has to have the same path and same rhythm. Sometimes it's a polyphony of languages that have to work together in some way. With musical projects alone, you can be more free.

I grew up partially with classical music but listened to a lot of rock when I was young - I like acoustic, and folk from Mali and Armenia and Turkey.

Often, I could not find the range of emotions in classical music which I found in the The Rolling Stones and Hendrix. Listening to Bach, I found a deep spirituality and felt elevated above the human level. Yet the feeling and emotions attached to popular music speak to us far more personally, and I couldn't leave that behind.

The great art of the past became great because it started to go out of the perimeters that defined art and defined new territories.

I don't like the idea of 'classical crossover,' even if sometimes I see this category given to what I'm doing.

My music comes from my personal background.

The Arctic Ocean is completely unprotected, so technically, people can do with it whatever they like.

It is very important to have connection with your soul and open your heart to people.

I feel today, with all the possibilities we have in our hands, all the new technology at our disposal, everything is becoming obvious. Nothing is surprising. You can see beautiful things on Instagram, but there is something that doesn't touch you deeply. Everything is normal, while there's nothing that grabs you and turns you upside down.

I went to Mali for the first time in 2000, and I met Toumani Diabate and Ballake Sissoko - two of the greatest kora players of our time.

I was a teenager, and I started to go to high school, and it was a disaster!

I express myself using my classical skills to write more complex forms of popular music.