Lia Ices Quotes

It was right after I did Piaf, 'La Vie en Rose'. I started to take singing lessons and finding where I could go.

Well, the teacher I studied with for nineteen and a half years was a man named Paul Gavert. He was a great lieder singer, so basically I'm a trained lieder singer because of that teacher. The teacher I currently study with - since 1995 - is Joan Lader, who also studied with Gavert.

I think I have allowed my voice to experiment with the different genres. And I think that I have just really enjoyed the journey of getting to know my voice and seeing what it's capable of, what it's not capable of.

When I had my first voice lesson I was 15 years old. And I had a really good teacher. This is what made all the difference. A good teacher will teach you the technique, but also how to listen to your voice.

When my opera Plump Jack was performed in 1989, my first piano teacher sent me something that I'd composed when I was four. I remember I played it, and it still sounded like me. I'm the same composer I was then.

We were playing, not for the drunks, but for the musicians, because it was more intellectually challenging. We needed somewhere to put our energy to show that we were growing, and as we started to achieve this, people came to hear us musically.

At the age of 15 I began my singing lessons, and once I became a professional performer, I dove into acting.

I prefer to think of myself as a musician who is still learning and trying to do something every time out.

I wanted to be Whitney Houston at first, and when I started taking voice lessons, my voice teacher kind of geared me more towards opera.

I have had a singing teacher in L.A. for many, many years just to work on my voice as an actor.

I went to a performance-art high school, and a teacher there was signing me up for open-mic nights at the comedy club. I think about it now, and I think, 'Well, that may be inappropriate,' but it was great!'

Every time I re-perform a song, I gain some perspective.

I tried playing for the public, and I selected music that I thought would be pleasing to them. Times are different now. Today, I play the music I want, and I just try to do my best.

Just stick to what you feel you sing best at, no matter what it is.

In the band Semi-Precious Weapons, I got to sing, wear, and say exactly what I wanted for ten years.

I just wanted to make melodies. I started trying to do my own thing and let the melodies make the genre themselves.

I never really had the chance to play the kind of music I wanted to play. It was always just classical. It had its limits. I play piano now and again in the new forms of music that I actually want to play, but at the time, it was something that I just kind of moved past.

In the early 1970s, I took singing lessons with John Hargreaves, a leading singer with English National Opera, when I was home from university.

I remember someone once saying, "Pete, you know you really should take voice lessons." And I said, "Well, if I could find any voice teacher that could teach me to sing like Lead Belly I'd spend every cent to study under him." But every time you'd go to a voice teacher, he'd teach you to warble, as if you'd want to be an opera singer, and that's not what I'm interested in.

After working on 'Europa,' I found it incredibly freeing to speak English in a film, so it kind of sparked an interest in me as an artist to improve my acting.

I suspect a singing teacher would have a fit with my diction. They'd probably think I was doing a very bad job.

For 'Chapters', I decided to let go of my insecurities, found myself some talented R&B producers, and worked with them.

I think my music covers a broader sound than just 'Tropical House'... My goal is to simply be a great producer in my own right without being pigeonholed.

When I was in high school, the energy in hip-hop at that point was the park energy... I was just trying to develop my style at that point, and I think, when you're trying to find your style, you find yourself.

I can run the gamut with beats that no one else would think of. I'm not a trained musician, so I focus on what feels right before I dispatch to writing.