Jessye Norman Quotes

I can sing, but I never considered myself a powerhouse vocalist but more of a rock-pop singer.

I always try to get to the point where I can do different things with my voice.

There were times, I could say, later in the career, that I wished that my voice would be deeper for materials that I might've wanted to select to do. But that's the style of my voice. There's nothing I can do about the height of my voice. And so I learned to deal with it.

I know that composers know my voice type and what songs will suit me. I have been able to mould my voice according to the nature of the song given to me, be it rock, pop or jazz.

Some people are really surprised that I can sing different ways.

I'm under no illusion. There are lots of male singers out there with raspy voices.

My own singing voice is not very good and I don't think that anybody really sings in their own voice.

People often ask me how I developed my vocal sound, and the answer usually disappoints them: 'It's just the way I sound when I sing.'

I've never had a very quiet voice. I tried in choir to make it smaller, and it just didn't work out. And I listened to a lot of soul music when I was growing up on my own accord. But I was mostly into Mama Cass and Gladys Knight, and they all had big voices too; just different than mine.

The human voice is the most perfect instrument of all.

I'm a lyric soprano. I can try to step outside that and do different kind of singing, but it's not something I can sustain over the long haul, and what is good for your voice is good for your career.

My favorite type of music to sing would be between R and B and opera.

Right now, my voice is better than ever. It changed. I have better low notes than I had before.

I can't sing anything other than country!

Because everything about the voice interests me, I felt it would be fascinating to learn a completely different style of singing.

I thought everybody had falsetto. And since I wasn't a schooled singer who studied with anybody, I just thought anybody who had a voice could do anything they wanted with their voice.

I know that I can sing really loud. It's like having that really big Evinrude engine on the back of your fishing boat. But I've been trying to be more dynamic with my voice, and not just singing on 10 all of the time out of terror.

I cannot switch my voice. My voice is not like an elevator going up and down.

With classical singing you have to put out so much air - you project, you emit force.

As much as I appreciate people putting me in the category of these very acrobatic belters, I feel like my strength is my... interpretation and my truthfulness with songs, and I don't want young people to think it's all about the high notes that they have to hit.

I want to sing like Aretha Franklin. Before her I wanted the technical ability of Ella Fitzgerald.

I've never been into the typical R&B voice, with runs and bluesy sounding words. That doesn't suit me.

I think I don't sing as hard as I used to sing. I used to kind of hit the accelerator a lot back in my youth, but now it's just being able to control it, and not work it so hard and use more of an emotional or sub textual kind of approach to singing.

For singers, our singing voice is our natural voice, not the speaking.

I never breathe through the nose, not when I'm singing. In the opera, you don't have so much time. That's fine at the beginning of an opera or after somebody else has been doing an aria, and you want to get a good fresh start.