Matisyahu Quotes

I'm actually not an exhibitionist at all. When you get onstage and you get under the lights playing music, I feel more hidden and more alone than anywhere else. You hide behind your music and let your emotions come out through the music.

Intimacy comes from being yourself on the stage and making the audience feel, without trying, that you're sittin' down there with 'em, playing, and that can happen in a big hall, if you have a good audience that want to listen.

In recitals, you are naked before the audience - well, naked with your jacket and tails. The audience sees and hears the real person, not some role you are interpreting.

I play shows sometimes, and if everything's connecting, I start blabbing to the audience about anything. Between songs, talking about things in my personal life, or whatever. But there are other situations where I feel a little closed-off. It's really kind of a day-to-day thing.

.. I get more of a dreamy thing from the audience - it's more of a thing that you go up into. You get into such a pitch sometimes that you go up into another thing. You don't forget about the audience, but you forget about all the paranoia, that thing where you're saying, 'Oh gosh, I'm on stage - what am I going to do now ?' - Then you go into this other thing, and it turns out to be like almost like a play in certain ways

When I perform, I like to immerse myself in the music, and I just try to get off on the diversity of music.

Playing live is closer to theatre, although when you're up there on your own, it's quite scary and revealing because you're playing your own songs. It's like a one man show that you've written yourself.

I remember seeing McCoy Tyner in concert, and thinking that the music was incredible, but wanting to be invited in. I figured that humor was the way of letting the audience in. I've gotten a hard time about it, but I love to be funny onstage.

There's a wonderful tradition of jazz people getting on stage and jamming and finding some feeling for music with audiences who may be fresh. For others, it might be just like a comfortable shirt they've been wearing.

I refuse to dance. And I can't dance anyway. I'm not in a band for that.

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me.

I'm very honest in my music and I'm often asked to explain the lyrics; as an introvert, I find that quite hard. And I always wear high heels on stage, which can be painful.

If you have a recital to do, you have to memorize the songs. I never use music when I do recitals. It produces an instant barrier, both for yourself and the audience.

I would rather be on stage playing to 25 people with a band I love and the music I love than learning dance moves I don't want to do for 25,000 people.

The first time I stepped on stage and I started singing, I knew that I wanted to do it for the rest of my life.

Performing live is a part of who I am.

I grew up on the side of the stage. I never had a fear of an audience. I never felt like they were separated from us. We were all in the living room, and it happens to be a big living room. I continue to operate on that assumption.

Live performance is everything. First of all, I have terrible stage fright. But beyond that, once the music starts, it's OK.

I'm not the kind of person who ever thought, 'Oh, a one-woman show - bring it on!'

I was in a band when I was in high school, and I was bitten by the performance bug, if anything else.

I had a couple of years of rebellion - I was singing in a rock band.

The music comes alive when you actually perform it in front of a crowd.

It used to be enough for me to get on stage and sing. I kind of crave the performance part now. I write knowing it's going to happen, which I didn't do before.

Performing as a musician is a lot different than performing as an actor. As an actor, you can hide behind the character in the play, and there's a director and other actors. When you're a musician, you're right there. It's sort of like being a comedian. You're giving the audience in real time something authentic from yourself. As an actor, my bullshit meter was going off like crazy at my first attempts to find my own rock star.

I literally left school and went straight into music via art college for a year, and I've been so involved in my job of writing songs that the more actively involved part became channeled into standing on the stage and saying things that way.