Kathleen Battle Quotes

I may like the Blizzard best, of all the songs I have written.

It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most. Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written, we go back to the greatest songs.

Music is a reservoir... of sounds.

Once you're in a musical, there is a huge opportunity for that, singing and dancing, 'Aha!' and 'Tada' at the end of the numbers; but it's a different kind of discipline you have to go through to maintain that kind of performance.

I write music visually.

A song versus an album is not like a scene versus a play.

I hold all of the songs that I have had the pleasure of recording and performing in high regard.

I like to create the music I hear in my interior. As a conductor, you have the ability to squeeze the sounds and interpretation you asked for from 50 to 80 people.

I am just trying to do a song the best possible way I can.

I don't know what really makes a great musical or not. In the end, you write it, and you write it because you want to write it.

I feel I'm most successful when I'm playing a concert, and it doesn't necessarily seem like I'm playing a saxophone but am coming off more like an orchestra or something like that.

I really like conducting my music in concerts because I'm convinced it's not just for films; it has its own life. It can live far away from the images of the movie.

As a singer, you have to bring the soul to the song.

Musicians should not play music. Music should play musicians.

'Ragtime' was the most magical show that I've done. I had an incredible experience with that, with the show itself, with the cast, with the audience. The response to that show - my God, it really blew me away, the reactions to that show, the way it changed their lives and altered their thinking, their own self-discovery.

My version of 'Fast Car' is in the same key as the original. To me that is where all the emotion lies.

When you're a writer, your song has to resonate with the person you're writing for in order for them to want to sing it. But if you're an artist, you can sing whatever you want.

A great conductor is an alchemical force: someone who can absorb the historical weight of a famous melody, the expectations of an audience, and the mercurial brilliance of a host of musicians, and shape them all to his or her interpretative ends.

Music is an intrinsic part of life; therefore, it is important to transport different forms of artistic expression, science, and mathematics into compositions.

I have always loved creating and entertaining. It started with music, singing. I grew up in a household filled with music - not pop but old-school stuff, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong.

I can't play an instrument to save my life. But when I'm creating, and when I'm making music, I feel like I'm the head of the orchestra, and I'm just waving my wand, and something is created.

Conducting 'Tristan' is like floating in amniotic fluid, but having worked on it for three months, I now know why people who go near it go so strange.

The 'Voice Kids U.K.' songs were chosen for me, and I had to try and make them mine.

The biggest thing is to just keep your voice in shape so that when the emotion hits, it's there to have the colors to paint those pictures with the lyrics as well as the sound.

The only way a musician can express feelings is playing.