Vladimir Horowitz Quotes

To me, a song is new every time I sing it.

Each song has its own way that it likes to be done, but it can be more than one way. If you tap into it, you can feel it.

I like to capture the spirit of what the writers intended but find my own nuances. That comes from jazz - the invention and freeness within a structure.

One of the things I love about jazz music is that intent is first and execution is second. In classical music, execution is first and intent is second, meaning that you must first learn a piece before you can truly add your interpretation to it.

I'm kind of lucky in the fact that I can take something that's in my head and write it down, or I can listen to a piece of music that somebody else has written and try to tap into what the music's saying and just kind of follow that, you know. I mean, nine times out of 10, I'm just kind of following where the music takes me.

My first album didn't come out until I was 27, which in pop years is late, you know. But when it came time to arrange it, I became a kid in a toy shop. I had a harp and a saxophone quartet and a symphony orchestra. I went berserk for a time.

We were playing popular music, but we were doing our own arrangements because we were too lazy to sit down and figure out the originals.

The apparatus has to serve our improbability and improvisation. Being good and playing the songs is not enough.

What I always try to do is to respond to the song; I've always rebelled against theory.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

Rock & roll is not about what you play, it's about how you play it.

People want to see musicians sing things that come from their own mind and own heart in real time, responding to the moment for them.

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

Colour does not make so much difference. Look at the Bach Chaconne: There is not one dynamic mark in the whole Bach Chaconne. Colours do not make so much difference.

If you don't take no chances, then you're not a performer. Performers always take chances. You go see a singer, they'll hit the high note. They'll hit that note, they're not afraid, they're gonna exaggerate the fact and make me enjoy it, make me say, 'Wow, I wish I could do that!'

I'm definitely a risk-taker with my music.

The art of interpretation is not to play what is written.

Studying music, everyone sort of has their own style - it's not like everyone's going for the same part.

I've been really trying to hone the art of songwriting in a way that doesn't follow any sort of guideline.

Maybe it's egocentric or whatever, but when I'm playing Beethoven, Bach, Hendrix, or whoever it is, in the end, it just feels like my own music and I'm making it up as I'm going along.

Music needs room to breathe.

I always like to get a role where I think, 'Ah, I know this is probably going to be played like this, but I'm going to do it like this.'

In the performance sense, I find that interpretation is improvisatory in nature. You can go anywhere with an interpretation on any given day.

I worked on 'Cadillactica' with the mind to not sample as much and focus on creativity.

Music is completely not reality. There's nothing about music that has any meaning at all. A lot of people disagree with that, but it's basically true. You can listen to a piece of music, and fifteen people will give you fifteen answers of what it's about.