Vladimir Horowitz Quotes

I may play the same songs night to night, but I never play them the same way.

Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.

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

As a singer, I float around. I'm kind of scatty, bouncing around a lot. I try to adapt to what's going on around me in the song and the arrangement.

Even if you're playing Brahms or a Beethoven concerto, you've got to have a different vantage point, slightly, each time.

Usually I like to improvise. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the piece, I like to improvise because I think it brings certain freshness and a reality to it, as long as it doesn't go too far out of the box.

I'm not able to go in with an act that I use month to month year to year all the time. It's constantly evolving and changing and that keeps me on my toes but certainly adds to the challenge.

Even if I play a similar role to one I've played before, I will never play it the same, I'll always try to do something different with it.

Improvisation is a compositional method.

Jazz is all about improvisation and it's about the moment in time, doing it this way now, and you'll never do it this way twice. I've studied the masters. Why would I want to play ball after the guys who sit on a bench? I want to play like Michael Jordan.

As an artist, you never want to write the same song again, you always want to challenge yourself to writing in a different way.

I always feel like out of every session that I do, whether it's a record session or even a concert, I like to think that there was something in there that I didn't do before. That's my goal.

When I'm performing music, it's like I'm doing a big improv.

As a songwriter, you always want to search for something that's right in front of you that you can twist into something new.

All of my solos were improvised initially - I would go in and get my bearings and see what I came up with.

At the audition, your assignment is to find something new in the song. Something you've never noticed before. A breath carried over, a thought that ties the whole thing together. Then take the risk and do it.

Theater is dangerously open to repetition. It's exciting when you hit on a new way.

Not only was it enough to be a cover band, it was perhaps the highest calling. After all, if you could play music recorded by others, stay true to the original, and still add fire and flare, why not?

I think jazz is actually quite unforgiving in its disdain for nostalgia. It demands creativity and change at its highest level.

Generally what I produce is new. Of course, they are often variations on the same subject.

Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, 'I've never seen anyone run like that before.' It's more than just a race, it's a style. It's doing something better than anyone else. It's being creative.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

Acting is an art form. If you are not creating something that's unusual and informative and at least has the possibility of being illuminating, then you are not into it as an art form.

It's so important to me that I feel like I'm doing something that's never been done before, whether that's in the show, or I'm writing a song. I can exist in this little box here, but I have to do something new with it.

I'm always trying out new stuff onstage. That's where I do all my writing.