Bryn Terfel Quotes

It's a constant challenge to get your arrangement and musical expression across to a new audience, especially when you're playing live every night like we are.

My ideal setting is I walk from the streets, backstage, and straight onto the stage. Two minutes, and I am on the stage. That way, in my head I have gone from my world and then into a social setting with my friends.

Nobody was listening when I learned how to play music. But there's something about being on stage, talking to the audience, looking at them and smiling, that's always been difficult for me. I'm a lot more comfortable now, but there are still moments of awkwardness.

I think generally playing live is a crap idea. So much of stage work is the presentation of personality, and I've never been interested in that.

You have to be ready to sing and perform at any time.

For me, it's always this constant battle and search when I'm out on stage as to where and when do I really open myself up to the people that are there. How do I let myself feel present in the space, and how do I allow myself to get into the music and interact with the band members.

For me, doing a show, the excitement of singing live, and the possibility that you're not gonna be perfect - that's the thrill of it.

The best shows I play, I almost don't even remember off the stage.

Why do you act? You act for an audience. In the theatre, you're in their presence. Film stars don't know what it is to have an audience.

I am blessed to perform in the studio and on the concert stage.

When you do a song new live on stage, it's kind of a bit weird until it gets worn in, you know, like oiled up a bit. It's still a little bit stiff until you really thrashed at it for a few weeks.

Onstage, there's no hiding; you either can or can't act. There's no second take.

So much of performing is a mind game. You're memorizing thousands of notes, and if you start thinking about it in the wrong way, everything can blow up in your face.

I sometimes think the theatre is more demanding because it requires things you don't have in films, like it requires you to make the people in the front row believe you and not look an idiot to them while the people right at the back can hear you.

I did Shakespeare in college, and the nerves I got doing Shakespeare are the same nerves I get doing 'Mad Men.' I want to get the dialogue just spot-on.

The studio work is the nasty, tedious, hard and nerve-wracking part, interrupted by moments of exhilaration. Playing live is the chance to actually have some fun and get on a stage.

I can sing in front of people. I can go on a TV show, live, and not feel like I'm going to throw up.

I love to go on tour and perform. I love all the parts of the process.

Playing live is such a total visceral experience, and really, as a musician, you're trained from the beginning to be a live performer.

You don't really know a song until you play it live.

I'm getting to a point where everything is becoming streamlined in my life. I'm learning how to stand onstage for two hours and play in front of thousands of people as if I am completely in the moment every moment.

Being on stage a lot is quite physical.

I just learned my lyrics and tried not to bump into the trumpet player. That was my philosophy.

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.

As long as I can sing halfway decent, I'd rather sing than act. There's nothing like being in good voice, feeling good, having good numbers to do and having a fine orchestra.