James Newton Howard Quotes

I think possibly the first film that has music as its leading character.

Music evokes emotion and emotion can bring it's memory.

The thing I realised about composition is, we remember most composers for four bars of music. Four singable bars of music. Pretty much any major composer from Debussy to Ravel to Mozart to whoever else - you can kind of hum it.

For me, the score is one of the main characters of a film.

If you ask me, music is the language of memory

Music is the soundtrack to my life.

'Passione' is a selection of the music moments that have accompanied my youth; a collection of cherished memories, of moments, of fleeting emotions, of sleepless nights.

The score, which comes often quite later in a film, can help reinvigorate your emotional engagement with it.

Music evokes so many feelings in us, memories, nostalgia, things that are connected to our past.

Music really becomes the soundtrack to the major events to your life.

Lots of people I know have bootlegged tapes of performances and if they play it I will be transported back sometimes with happiness, sometimes with horror.

I love the music, I love the times, so to me that was exciting personally just to play something that starts in 1986 with graduating high school, we've got a great soundtrack in the pilot.

My first concert makes me sound like a real old man. My very first concert was Jackie Wilson.

When I was growing up, I loved the films where you'd start them and the score might sound really odd at first and really different, and then by the time you finish, you can't imagine it being any other way.

I cry whenever I watch an emotional scene that I did, just because it brings me back to that moment. It's like, I remember being there; I remember feeling what I felt. It's really weird, right?

I always related my favorite music to the movies.

A song is like a saddle: you ride it for a while, and if it's the right kind of song you can sing it for the rest of your life.

I can remember soundtracks that you just can't separate from the film - It's just so intertwined, so important. Like the Hitchcock ones where they kind of inform each other and become this larger thing as a result.

I don't do nostalgia. It just doesn't occur to me. I'm living in the moment, and I don't have that gene.

I know I get a real kick, an emotional charge, out of playing a song I haven't played for 10 years. It just takes you back to that point in your life.

When I'm playing live, I'll rip out a ballad from my album, and I'll play that solo on the piano, which feels really good because it kind of takes me back to when I was younger.

Any time I hear certain songs I put in a movie, I have to not listen to them anymore because I associate them with that movie. They take on that association rather than the association I had when I first heard them. So it's kinda bittersweet to put a song in a movie, honestly.

Music is as vast as the sky, the oceans, the universe.

People don't always realize that as a performer, you've got to relive those moments. Memories crash through your brains, and you've got to think about your past and the reason why you wrote the song. All that emotion comes back.

'Raaga' is one of those movies which is very special for any music director to compose music for.