Musical Experience Quotes

When movement isn't enough, you dance, or when speaking isn't enough, you sing. When it's organic, and it's earned like that in a musical, that's when it works, and then there's nothing like it because it's this thing that takes you to a whole 'nother level, you know?

I've seen the Mass For The End Of Time in concert but my brother's the more musical one really.

Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.

I was living and working with adult men who were playing a real art form. And I had been playing blues all my life. As soon as I formed my first band, we played Jimmy Reed stuff. So it wasn't like I was a white kid who was learning the blues from B.B. King records.

When I write the set, I try to create something that will not only be interesting for the audience, but will have a flow for the band, too, so we don't get boring.

I've always liked New York, as I like towns with an edge and New York has a European feel, so when I came to play music here in the '80s it was a surprise to me.

I remember seeing 'Les Miserables' with the original cast - this was in '87 - and I was blown away by it.

I've had the honor of sitting in with the Allmans at their Beacon shows a couple of times, and it just doesn't get better than that.

The only reward the musician receives is music: the privilege of standing in the presence of music when it leans over and takes us into its confidence. As it is for the audience. In this moment everything else is irrelevant and without power. For those in music, this is the moment when life becomes real.

When people ask that question, it's very hard to nail down a formula or a circumstance that I always write in, but I definitely do believe that there have been moments, musically, when I have channeled something, you know?

My first concert was Chicago and Moody Blues. I was 15 years old.

I used to play the drums when I was, like, 5 through 10.

Edgar Meyer's violin concerto was the first piece of contemporary music I worked on in any depth. I was 18 or 19.

I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man.

Everyone wants the same thing in this band, so we definitely respect each other. I mean, all of us have had hit songs, so it's a band full of people who really know what they're talking about, so you have to respect that even when you think something you have might be great, and they go, 'Man, it's not as great as you think it is.'

I grew up singing in Kansas. My dad had a band when I was growing up. So I sang in church and school and started singing with his band when I was seven. So I've been singing all my life.

Songs like "Spirit Carries On" really gets the audience moved and on the same page. It's challenging and all so much fun to play.

I got to jam with Prince, which is amazing.

We've had the good fortune of performing to live music a few times in our career and it always creates a different dynamic.

I played the trumpet for nine years, and then I joined the choir after that, and then I was in musicals in high school.

Some artists see a gig as an audience worshipping them. I think it is about having a great time together. I have a part as the singer. An audience has a part. Playing a gig doesn't make me high on myself.

Music is a total constant. That's why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in your or the world, that one song says the same, just like that moment.

I'm the first to admit that we were totally dependent on a particular place and time... for us, seeing Minor Threat at the CBGB hardcore matinee was just as necessary a force in our lives as the Treacherous Three at Club Negril or the Funky Four + One More at the Rock Lounge.

I grew up doing musicals. I've done so many musicals in my life, I kind of got them out of my system. But, I certainly would be open to them. Rocky Horror Show is a big favorite of mine.

After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed and mourning over tragedies that were not my own.