Emanuel Ax Quotes

My whole thing is not just to play music for people, but to make them part of the evening.

I love little theatres because it's very intimate, and you can have a very easy rapport with the audience. Everyone's in the same room.

Music - you need the give and take from the audience, the feeling of attention. It's not about me: it's about the music itself.

Country music busts the wall between performer and audience. There's a connection because there's a vulnerability, a confessional quality, to so much of the songwriting. Those lyrics take you in.

Music is a gut thing. You're working in a medium which is more in touch with the primal than the modern. A gig is a ritual. There's a congregation.

San Francisco has always been my favorite booing city. I don't mean the people boo louder or longer, but there is a very special intimacy. When they boo you, you know they mean you. Music, that's what it is to me. One time in Kezar Stadium they gave me a standing boo.

It still amazes me how many musicians aren't really interested in engaging with their audience at all. Alfred Brendel, a pianist for whom I have the greatest respect, has described performance as a sacred communion between the artist and the composer. But what about the audience? Music is communication, a two-way street.

I think that musicians should never forget about the intimacy of bringing two people together, and the aesthetic transference where you're almost vicariously involved in a romance between other people.

I love to sing 'Stay' every night... because people sing along. And they do sing along - loudly!

The game is if the orchestra can hear each other, they play better. If they play better and there's a tangible feeling between the orchestra and the audience, if they feel each other, the audience responds and the orchestra feels it.

I find a similarity between performing music onstage and acting - a reality of emotion.

What I like about playing America is you can be pretty sure you're not going to get hit with a full can of beer when you're singing and I really enjoy that!

The desire to share is not a vague, windy sentiment, not when you see the massive rise in live concerts in response to the phenomenon of downloading music... People want to get rid of the headphones and be part of a shared experience.

Collaboration to me is... my favorite collaboration in the theatre is the collaboration between the actors and the audience because it's just that thing that happens when the only thing left that is left on the human scale is that human beings come to look at other human beings act out stories.

I want to write songs people can sing along to. I can think of nothing more exciting than travelling the world and playing to audiences and having them sing your words along with you.

I do music for the fans. I want to lift fans up.

Applause should be an emotional response to the music, rather than a regulated social duty.

I do see music as complete refuge. It's a universal home, complete common ground between everyone; it comes from a place that has no nation and no boundaries around it.

A novelist writes a novel, and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a varied and personal response, the communal nature of the audience is like having five hundred people read your novel and respond to it at the same time. I find that thrilling.

I'd rather play a few nights at the Fillmore than play one night at an arena.

I get hugs all the time from strangers. I do believe that people can feel your persona when you perform live, but it is one of the nicest things if you can translate that on your records.

The choruses are important for me. I want to say something, and sing-along is great.

I just don't like looking at the crowd and seeing them just staring and listening to the music. When I get them involved, whatever type of music I'm playing, they leave there feeling better.

Performing a song is intense. When I see people connecting, it makes it all worthwhile.

I did a lot of touring in my youth, and I learnt very quickly that giving is what it's all about. It's about the gift of making an audience feel great and forget their cares, if only for a few hours.