Classical Musicians Quotes

Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism.

I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

Music is indeed the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

I've worked with some great orchestras and amazing classical musicians, but I don't like the conceptualization of classical music as an elitist form of art.

I think the other thing that's important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time. In fact I often say that the biggest difference between classical music and everything else is that classical musicians sometimes shut up because they're told to, because the score tells them to. Whereas any music that's sort of based on folk or jazz, everybody plays all the time.

When you hear the melodic structures of what classical musicians put together and you compare it to that of a rock & roll record, there's a hell of a long way rock & roll has to go.

My father was a classical musician and my mother was a writer.

I'd been trained as a classical musician, but also as a pop musician. My teacher made sure that everything was available.

Artists, whether they're classical musicians or pop musicians, they have always been the reflection of society, and in many ways a healing part of whatever is wrong in society, and I think it's important for us to continue to do that, and I don't see enough of it today.

I know I’m an African-American, and I know I play the saxophone, but I’m not a jazz musician. I’m not a classical musician, either. My music is like my life: It’s in between these areas.

I don't really have a career as a jazz musician. I don't really have a career as a classical musician. I don't really have a career as a college professor, and yet I did all those things and I did them well. I put out some records in the 1980's and 1990's that changed the way some trumpet players played.

I would like for people to not be stuck by the rules of what is expected of a classical musician. If you really want to do something different, don't be afraid to do so. Think of music itself and not the rules or expectations of people.

Classical musicians go to the conservatories, rock´n roll musicians go to the garages.

Don't be a perfectionist... leave that to the classical musicians.

And what classical music does best and must always do more, is to show this kind of transformation of moods, to show a very wide psychological voyage. And I think that's something that we as classical musicians have underestimated.

It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.

All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

I've outdone anyone you can name - Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.

You don't see the European classical musicians allowing the music of Bach, Brahms, or Beethoven to become extinct. That music has gone on for centuries and centuries. We have the same obligation. Why do we have to become so 'hip' that we can say, 'Bebop is square,' or "New Orleans is square'? This, to me, is a shame.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky were not classical musicians while they were alive and active, they were the rock stars of their day.