Galina Vishnevskaya Quotes

In chamber music, the audience can hear each instrument and understand (and feel) what the composer and the musicians have in mind as they play.

The goal is always to make a nice tableau painting with the voice. The more color I can find, the more shadow I can find - the goal is always to make more nuance and colors.

During 'Torches,' I was more concerned with communicating the spirit of the song than the actual lyrics.

There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don't really think most people really understand what they've seen.

We of the soft-crooning radio type of singer are giving the people what they want. The American public as a whole does not care for full-throated operatic singing. And why should it? Down through the ages, it has been the simple song which has lived and continues to touch the heart of humanity. And so it is with singing.

Composers, like authors, have a lot in common. Our main goal is to connect with the listener emotionally.

Music and language are a vital element. We, as actors and directors, offer it to people who want to experience it. Sometimes the actual meaning is less important than the words themselves.

Any artist, the work you do, if it's a painting or if it's a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else's life. That's what's fun about sharing art.

Your spoken voice is a part of it - not a big part of it, but it's something. It puts people at ease, and once again kind of reaches out and makes a bridge for what's otherwise difficult music.

The role of the musician is to go from concept to full execution. Put another way, it's to go from understanding the content of something to really learning how to communicate it and make sure it's well-received and lives in somebody else.

I question what emotion Manilow touches. People are entertained by him. But are they emotionally moved? I don't believe anything that Barry Manilow sings.

In song the same rule applies as in dramatic verse: the meaning must yield itself, or yield itself sufficiently to arouse the attention and interest, in real time.

I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience.

In music, you feel a connection to the voice and think about the person behind it. In art that's secondary.

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

How does my music connect to an audience? That is just a complete mystery to me.

I learned by listening to other people sing and doing impressions of them. And there are things no one can ever teach you, like phrasing. By listening to Sinatra, for instance - you felt that everything he sang had happened in his life.

Wrestling is like any form of drama or pretty much any form of entertainment - some people understand this about forms of entertainment really intuitively when they're younger, and others would have to be really not very intelligent for a long time until we realize that every human mood is an art.

As a musician, you never understand why people connect with certain songs.

I think the purpose of a piece of music is significant when it actually lives in somebody else. A composer puts down a code, and a performer can activate the code in somebody else. Once it lives in somebody else, it can live in others as well.

You don't have to have a great voice to sing, just a distinctive one. But make sure you say the words clearly and tell a story.

When an audience comes to one of my concerts, I hope they'll see themselves, somewhere, in one of the songs.

The great musicians are those who can reach people, who can make people feel something.

All good performance pieces have some philosophical validity. That's the difference between mere theater and performance art.

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.