A. R. Rahman Quotes

I would say that I'm very proud that Metallica plays heavy music - but equally proud that we don't think like a heavy-metal band.

When I think of Boris Diaw, I think of Beethoven in the age of the romantics

I think transcending our cultures is going to be extraordinarily necessary for our survival. I don't think we can carry our cultures through the keyhole of the stretch of the next millennium

I'm actually doing what I like doing, which is mixing opera music and classical music with soul and folk. And I was writing and talking about what I've actually experienced, and I don't think that's very common.

I've always loved mixing Middle Eastern instruments into a classical orchestra.

When the Beatles wrote 'Paperback Writer,' it couldn't have been the same old thing. You can hear so many influences in it, from the blues to Bach, and it's not just verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge chorus. They start off singing a cappella, almost like a Bach chorale, and the song goes into this bluesy guitar riff.

I'm a big Beethoven fan, and you'll struggle to find a three-minute song on any of his stuff.

It was a huge honour to play at the Palladium with the BBC Concert Orchestra.

I always felt music to be universal and undifferentiated - Western classical, folk, Carnatic or Hindustani and so on.

Democratic foursomes don't work in the '70s like they did in the '60s, when there were fewer musical directions.

We've incorporated different sounds from different countries and genres, and we've explored widening the range of our music.

The musical instuments may be western but my voice never wavers away from my own ragas. it is good to make experiments and I do a lot of them but my thoughts always round the centre and that centre is the tradition of my elders and it is classical music...

New York has inspired more remarkable music than any other city I can think of.

I think we are becoming more and more linked, and before long, we'll all be one culture. It's happening in every field, not just fashion. Actually, I think the only hope for peace is if culture is homogenized. Unfortunately, money seems to be the only solution to political disagreements. If we are all linked through culture and trade, it won't be worth fighting each other.

I was fortunate enough to work at the peak of the great golden age of musicals. And then for awhile, I think they were being advanced in different ways. Andrew Lloyd-Webber brought the rock beat to musicals; people tried different things. The joy of musicals is that there is no perfect recipe; it is what you throw into it.

I want you to play me like a cello.

I think I was annoyed going through the '90s just as a guy who loves music. There wasn't a lot of music for me. Everything was groove driven. We lost the plot with the melody. There's no more melody.

As a composer I could never find use for over 4 or 5 notes in any musical number, and as a playwright most of my plays have two acts because i couldn't think of an idea for the third act.

I don't think about, "How does this song that has more of an electronic mix prefix to a song that has a full orchestra next to a song that has other things?" I just work on it as-needed.

Fortunately, I started very young, so I read music very well. And my favorite composers to play are Brahms and Mozart.

I'm a proud Indian but I feel very, very happy that people have accepted me here as well in the west. It's the people here in Britain that have given me my newfound fame here, so I owe it to them. We must give credit where it's deserved. It's not just the Asian community, it was also the British people who voted for me on Celebrity Big Brother and wanted to see me. So, I'm very happy and I think I'm a good eclectic mix of both cultures.

I think music gives so much inspiration. I listen to all kinds of music: pop, hip-hop, everything. I also love classical music.

Pop music, which I deeply admire and wish I could play better than I can, is based on expressing one mood, one feeling at a time. Classical music is by its very nature involved with different kinds of music, constantly transforming one another, which is more akin to the way our experience of life really is.

If you think of the history, in the days of Brahms and Beethoven and all these guys, almost every concert was a new music concert. To play something old was really an exception.