Violin Performance Quotes

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

My father was a trained accountant, a BCom from Sydenham College and a self-taught violinist. In the 1920s, when he was in his teens, he heard a great violinist, Jascha Heifetz, and he was so inspired listening to him that he bought himself a violin, and with a little help from an Italian teacher, he learned to play it.

There's a million people who can go out and play the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto brilliantly, but we're the only ones who can do 'A Little Nightmare Music.'

At the end of '69 I did a gig with Jean Luc Ponty here in L.A. He was an electric violinist.

I know a girl who cries when she practices violin because each note sounds so pure it just cuts into her, and then the melody comes pouring out her eyes. Now, to me, everything else just sounds like a lie.

My dad was in the military, yeah. He was in the Air Force, and he was a doctor, so he would go places for six months here, and two years there. And I was home-schooled because I played the violin, and I did a lot of competitions.

The composer Stravinsky had written a new piece with a difficult violin passage. After it had been in rehearsal for several weeks, the solo violinist came to Stravinsky and said he was sorry, he had tried his best, the passage was too difficult, no violinist could play it. Stravinsky said, 'I understand that. What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it.'

Well, my main instrument is violin, but I think of myself as a songwriter who happens to play violin.

I don't mind conducting the orchestra if I can play the violin.

As a dancing violinist, there have been a couple of moments where I'm like, 'Oops! This is an expensive mistake!'

Well my dad forced me into playing the violin when I was about three and it all started from there. I went to Suzuki for violin lessons, and you learn to play by ear instead of reading music.

I played violin and got into that Suzuki program in the second grade.

I have this weird musical thing I do: I play violin, and I even went on tour with Tim Robbins. We did a bunch of Canadian cities, and then went down to the States, and then we ended up in Japan.

I know Ornette was playing violin sometimes - that was his bridge into the classical world, to break up that whole pecking order.

Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.

I started with the classical violin when I was 6, and I guess it went well.

My earliest memories are listening to my Grandmother playing the piano at our house as I jumped up and down on the couch. She was a violinist with the Pittsburgh Symphony in the 30s and 40s, and was a huge influence on me.

Violin was my first form of expression - and is still in a lot of ways.

If I can add, say, 10 great new violin concertos to the repertoire before I'm done, that will be truly exciting.

I first played the Royal Albert Hall when I was 14. I was a violinist with the Birmingham Schools Concert Orchestra, and we travelled down from the Midlands for the last night of the School Proms. We played some pieces from the Harry Potter films, and the violin parts were really hard.

I know the lead singer of System of a Down, and I record violin tracks with him.

My mother playing the violin and my father and grandfather playing the piano, classical stuff.

When I was young, I was being pushed, against my will, towards becoming a classical musician. I had music scholarships; I had to play the violin and do orchestra practice and that sort of stuff. That meant I didn't get to do any school plays. I desperately wanted to do that.

I was raised a musician and I played classic music, violin, in orchestras and music comedy theaters, I have music running around in my head all the time, and if I hear music that's too interesting, I have to pay attention to it.

Yes, I mean like you know, having studied with Yehudi Menuhin that is like some direct route into Bach, because he was one of the foremost interpreters of Bach for the violin.