Pablo Casals Quotes

I think acting, for me, is about play. It's about time, and it's about feeling, like there's a story to tell and I can tell it through my body and my voice.

All music has to speak in some form or other.

Nobody sang better than my mom. That's why I've never even thought of singing for singing sake. I've always thought of a song as an acting piece, as a way to say something.

Is it not the business of the conductor to convey to the public in its dramatic form the central idea of a composition; and how can he convey that idea successfully if he does not enter heart and soul into the life of the music and the tale it unfolds?

I love singing. It's who I am. When I act, I take a small part of myself and just magnify it, but when I'm singing, that's who I am. I don't write music, so I choose songs that I would have written.

I'm on fire when I'm singing, I'm completely in character, I use my sense memories, and every syllable of it is meant. It's a very special thing.

I'm not really a songwriter - I'm an interpreter. So in a sense I am an actress first and foremost. I act out the songs, and I lead with my heart.

Opera is musical theatre, and the music can teach you so much about the theatre. Very often I use musical terms to think about how I comport myself on stage: I employ 'rubati,' 'ostinati,' 'cadenze.' Finding these parallels is very fascinating for me.

But I won't deprive myself of singing opera as long as my voice follows.

It's understanding the intention of a composer that allows a producer and an arranger to make those moments speak.

I had classical training but I don't consider myself an opera singer though.

I'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them.

I don't get in there and create a character. It's more of a voice that I hear living inside the music.

I bring my classical training - some of it, but not all of it - and also my background and culture, to spirituals. And I try to leave room for that unpredictable factor, where the feeling of the song is allowed to come through. The same ethos can be applied to singing Mozart, or Schubert, or Bach. It's not just about what's on the page.

So when I'm playing, I'm sort of painting a feeling in the air.

When Billie Holiday sings a song, I hear the song, but I always hear her and her truth.

I've always believed you should sing songs you can really put yourself into. I think the emotion you put into it is just as important as singing the notes.

I think that music, being an expression of the human heart, or of the human being itself, does express just what is happening - the whole of human experience at the particular time that it is being expressed.

I just don't see myself as a songwriter or a country singer or any of those things anymore. It's more trying to express ideas and emotional textures.

When an actor sings a song, he will be able to bring forth the emotion in it much better than a playback singer.

When I would be on the stage singing, I would see a movie of something that happened, I would be telling the story. I would be describing the story in sound, but my goal would be to make somebody else run their own movie.

When you're just using words, you're limiting yourself to everyday casual speak. As soon as you start to sing, you can unlock the stuff that's underneath.

What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.

Singing is near miraculous because it is the mastering of what is otherwise a pure instrument of egotism: the human voice.

When you play Bach like Chopin, and Chopin like Bach, something good happens.