Phil Elverum Quotes

Yes, I'm a musician. I also like to play with others, sometimes more, sometimes less.

I've always worked with other people. As a musician, it's your role to basically share with other people.

One of the things I like to do is to try to jam with everybody.

I think music naturally wants to be played with more than one person. There's a surprise element, and you don't know what it will be, and it's up to that other person's energy to help create this third thing.

Sometimes I like to make music together with a singer or with singers.

I have a buddy of mine who's a musician, and I play guitar and sing quite a bit with him.

We would play, then they would play a set, then we would jam on the last song.

As an improviser I'm now pretty comfortable with trios, so I'm thinking of working up to quartets.

I'm having a blast being the music director at the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. It certainly is challenging for me, but I love challenges.

It's such a joy to work with different ensembles and create a collaboration. Rehearsing and building a performance is very interesting for me.

I'm a keen musician. Me and my mates have a great times jamming and recording stuff. We have a great band behind us and have turned my nursery-rhyme songs into quite credible pieces of music.

I love seeing people collaborate to make great music!

But the classic Tenacious D songwriting is Jack or myself will have an idea - I might have a riff - and we'll improv. And once Jack's feeling it, we turn on the tape recorder and start jamming, improv on that riff, improv on those lyrics, and then go back and see if there's anything good in there.

I see myself as a composer who plays music and likes to play with other people, and not just as a solo artist.

There are lots of things I like about playing in a band, the things I can't do by myself you know.

I like to play music. I like projects. I like excuses to hang out with my friends and play music.

But duets are a lot of fun, I'd love to do another one.

Music is pretty intimate stuff and I can only work with very few people: Gonzalez being one, Mocky being another and, on a completely different level, Broken Social Scene. With Broken Social Scene it's not one-on-one, it's a one-on-12. It's very healthy, very comfortable, like a big pot luck supper among old friends.

Yeah, I love doing ensemble pieces. You get to meet so many new people and make new friends.

I just love to play and I get a chance to play with other musicians and I jump on it.

I'm an interpreter of music.

The interesting thing about improvisation is you're making something up in front of the audience. Now music helps you out a little bit because you have an instrument that'll separate you from the audience.

Comedy is like music, and the way to make the best music is to have skilled musicians in your band.

I was a drummer, and I did a little singing too.

The magic of playing has to do with how much everyone wants it to succeed. If you have five players in a situation where the music is being improvised and one is determined it is not going to succeed, it won't succeed even if one of the musicians takes control.