Jon Batiste Quotes

I find myself more genuinely drawn to the essence of Beethoven in Schnabel than I ever have been by anybody.

I hate playing the piano! And it's so hard to fight for Beethoven's soul! But that's what I have to do!

Piano playing is a dying art. I love the fact that I can be one guy with one instrument evoking an emotional and musical experience.

I only know two pieces; one is 'Clair de Lune' and the other one isn't.

I got obsessed with classical music, I got obsessed with Chopin, with playing the piano.

I also have a big love of classical music played on piano because this is the environment I grew up in my brother being one of the great masters in this world.

Rachmaninoff made a musician out of me. His 'Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini' was the piece that sent me into raptures. It spoke to me. To me, it was a tender entreaty for the misunderstood.

My absolute favorite pieces are 'Rhapsody in Blue' and 'Begin the Beguine.' I play these when I am working.

You don't go out and play Beethoven's 'Opus 111' without having rethought about it every time you play.

No two composers were more totally at home in front of the piano than Debussy and Chopin, hands to keys to strings to sound waves to pen and paper in one perfect gesture of inspiration.

I really love to play 'Moonlight Sonata' by Beethoven. I can still read music, but I need to practise more. The way your fingers move - it's something that comes from memory. I love music.

The Steinway piano - with its beauty and power - is the perfect medium for expressing the performer's art, drama and poetry.

And now, in honour of the 150th anniversary of Beethoven's death, I would like to play 'Clear the Saloon', er, 'Clair de Lune', by Debussy. I don't play Beethoven so well, but I play Debussy very badly, and Beethoven would have liked that.

I cannot say what I think is right about music. I only know the rightness of it.

Well, I don't know any piece by heart, but Mozart goes something like this... What do you think?

My favorite song is called 'Reachout.' There are so many different stories told in that song. I think anyone who listens to it will gather a different meaning, but each answer is true. I also like the sound of it, period - there are a lot of classical influences.

For ten years, I went to piano lessons. I don't think I'm a very musical person, and the theory quite defeated me, but I had a freak aptitude for Debussy and Ravel.

However, I began composing as soon as I started taking piano lessons.

I can't play any instrument for the life of me, but I know what I want to hear.

I abhor the words 'classical music.' Few things satisfy me more than a really good cover version.

Playing the Beethoven symphonies, for example, is a consummate experience for a musician because Beethoven speaks so directly to who we are as people.

And I definitely have an affinity with the piano.

Music is very abstract. When we talk about music, we're not discussing the music itself but rather how we react to it.

I love listening to things like those wonderful piano pieces of Stockhausen. It's just not my thing as a composer or performer, and thank goodness we're not obliged to be Modernist any more.

I sang 'Nessun Dorma' twice with Pavarotti, and he told me he'd heard 'Smoke' about five or six times, and every time was different. He was so jealous because if he deviated one jot from the traditional interpretation of the famous arias, he'd be crucified. We have the freedom.