Mark Knopfler Quotes

My parents were both high-school music teachers.

I would like to teach music. It's weird the way they teach music in schools like Julliard these days.

I was a teacher for a long time. I taught at a community college: voice, theory, humanities. And nowadays, music education is a dying thing. Funding is being cut more and more and more.

So many schools have cut the music classes out of their curriculum. We're trying to fill that gap by teaching the teachers how to educate the kids about their musical heritage.

I'm a band leader and substitute teacher, and then one day they bring me into a music class, and I'm like, 'Wait a minute, I know this stuff.' And the principal is like, 'Just throw the video in and call it a day,' and I'm like, 'That's not good enough. I want these kids to know what it's like to have a gig and all that kind of stuff.'

I taught guitar lessons for a long time for a living before I got on the road. I really enjoyed hanging out with kids, talking about music with them, and trying to influence them in a positive way.

I was using them as teachers for technique but I was never trying to be a folk.

There was the best teachers from the Czech Philharmonic, highly dedicated people, some of the best musicians in the world passing on the knowledge about the country, about the principles, and about the music.

The only job I'd ever had that might be considered not playing music was teaching guitar, which I did in college for a while, but that still falls in the same category.

I'm very interested, for instance, in music in education - getting young people not only to listen to, but participate in the music that I write. I consider this one of the most vital aspects of my work.

The Silverlake Conservatory is a nonprofit music school in Los Angeles where we teach music, mostly to kids, but to people of all ages - people who are old, people with beards, all kinds of people.

I'd like to teach kids how to write songs. This will be my first year so I'm just as green as some of the rest of the folks. It's like a music camp and I get to hang out with some of the past contestants.

High school music teachers... nobody makes a living off it.

They taught us because they wanted to pass the knowledge on and educate young musicians. It was not because they had to teach because they failed as musicians. There is a huge difference in the reasons why someone is teaching and what they can offer and what they cannot offer.

I basically started playing violin at the age of six. That lasted about three years because my previous teacher died and the second teacher didn't really know how to successfully get me going.

I think it's good for the composer to teach because you always have new students and you have to begin at the beginning and make things clear.

When I was 17, I taught music; I had 65 students a week, and I did that for a year. So that's pretty regular. But it was great to give the gift of music to people, seeing them learn. It's great to influence young people in a creative way.

I think it is most important for a teacher to play the pieces and studies that are being played by the student.

Music is an element that should be part and parcel of every child's life via the education system.

My mother, who is a Carnatic musician, started a school for children when I was around three, and I grew up listening to her teaching students.

My dad was a teacher. He has a Masters in music. He taught elementary school, and he played gigs his whole life, and we lived good.

And my career, the things that have happened have happened because of my music education background.

My mother was a very talented pianist, and she was a music teacher who hated to teach music, actually, but she loved to play, so I was brought up with Chopin, Debussy and Mozart.

When I was confronted with official tuition, the academic thing, I could see no relationship whatever between that and the music I'd been writing since I was 11.

I had a friend who had been teaching music for a long time, and he knew a bunch of teachers, so I just put up the money and started a school.