Marilyn Horne Quotes

I would love to do much more singing; it's just one of those things where I can't quite describe what it feels like when you're standing in front of a forty piece orchestra, and there's nothing between you and an audience but a microphone. It's like strapping yourself to a locomotive, and I love it.

Starting in music, where I get a chance to connect with the lyrics of a song, I learned so much about performing on stage and connecting to your audience and to what you're singing about. Singing is very emotional. Every song has its own purpose.

The music's rehearsed a lot. All people think about is, they think, in rock 'n' roll, they get the music off right and they think it's okay standing, looking macho. Well, it's not. That's boring. If you want to be a performer you've got to do a lot more work than that.

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

You know, when I did 'American Idol' the three times, I tried to tell these kids you have to tell the story of the lyric.

When I was 9 years old, I really wanted to be in the show business. I really wanted to be an artist. I would grab a wooden spoon and I would start singing, even if it was for my uncles and my aunts. And I would just sing any lah-lah song.

Playing live is basically just hyperactivity and a certain sense of enchantment that I deliver to the audience, to let them know what it would be like to be inside my head.

The fact is that great musical pieces take and hold the stage because they provide great emotional experiences.

I'd always put on little shows at home, but when I was 11, I did a community event in Woodford, where anyone could go. You had three days of vocal training and performed your song at the end.

I was pretty young when I decided I wanted to, well, more so be a singer. I started singing in church in my hometown, East Orange, New Jersey. I knew when I was about five or six that I wanted to be a performer.

Own every note I sing and sell it. Make a connection to the audience. That's what it comes down to, you know?

I'm a live performer and I love playing live.

Those minutes that I'm on stage are the best! Being there and looking at the crowd and seeing their faces, hearing them sing the positive words from the songs.

For me, music is so passionate, I have to give it my all every time I go onstage. Onstage, it was always comfortable for me, because that's where I felt at home.

Singing is my passion, my first love and the secret of my energy. Music to me is like finding my inner self, my soul. It gives me a great joy to see audiences enjoying with me. I have given my heart to singing. When I sing, I can feel romance in everything around me.

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.

Performing music live, there's a certain magic to it.

When I'm performing music, it's like I'm doing a big improv.

My favorite song to perform is 'Love of my Life.'

The greatest feeling in the world is performing and connecting with the audience.

I started performing in college, but I wasn't writing a lot.

Until I started performing in public, when at the end of the concert people would come to me with teary eyes and say that my performance took them to a trance zone, I had no idea that I can create an impact with my singing.

When I sing a set, people will say, 'I love 'Mayday.' People just love 'Mayday' so much. I love it too.

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.

What I love about the theater is that you know who you're acting for: your audience. And the thing I find really hard in film is, you don't. The audience is invisible. And we're sitting there, hoping there's other people out there.