Michael Feinstein Quotes

I learned from my uncle that jazz, like symphony music, was built to last.

The past is filled with people who aren't traditionally thought of as fantastic singers singing these songs that capture people; songs like 'Louie Louie.' I just aim toward that, and I think I've gotten better at it.

Regardless of who originally made it popular, any hit song becomes a challenge to the ingenuity and imagination of other musicians and performers.

In my next lifetime, I want to come back as a composer.

I put together the influences of my life in as clear a way as I possibly can, in the same way that Beethoven or Schoenberg or Bach put their influences together.

I'm not an intellectual composer.

I like to create the music I hear in my interior. As a conductor, you have the ability to squeeze the sounds and interpretation you asked for from 50 to 80 people.

Originally, I wanted to be a composer. I always tell people, 'I think of myself as a composer.'

We worked very hard to make the lyrics suit the music. I can't, like Elton John, for example, compose by lyrics. Elton has a great talent for that. Whatever you give him, including your questions, he composes in half an hour and makes a great song out of it.

I am happy to be a composer.

Music is a living art. You re-create it.

I am so highly skilled that when I pick up a phrase and then pick up my guitar, a form comes out almost immediately - a song - and once I start, I have to finish it.

A great conductor is an alchemical force: someone who can absorb the historical weight of a famous melody, the expectations of an audience, and the mercurial brilliance of a host of musicians, and shape them all to his or her interpretative ends.

I think, now that I've been writing songs in general, whether it's for the group or for me, I definitely feel like I got a little trigger happy, because it was so exciting to have production and create and put a lot in there.

Music lives in my mother - she's played in bands in Detroit and toured and did the whole thing. So I have somebody who's done it all to just talk to. And we write songs together.

Most of my collaborations, certainly post - Howard Ashman but even with Howard, are music first.

I can't play an instrument to save my life. But when I'm creating, and when I'm making music, I feel like I'm the head of the orchestra, and I'm just waving my wand, and something is created.

I always communicate musically. I want my band not only to learn the form and feel of the song by ear, like I do, but also have the freedom to contribute.

In any musician's career, a film like 'Manikarnika' becomes a landmark dream project, which is challenging and musically enriching at the same time.

Songwriting isn't a choice. You're either called upon to bear the burden, or you're not. It's not all fun and games.

Producing isn't just making beats on a beat machine. It's bringing together these string players with this flute player and this singer, and telling them to all work in the key of C major... You bring these people together and let them all cook.

Hip-hop was the music that actually got me excited about it and the actual prospect of performing. I think I loved music from an early age because my parents wanted me to love it as much as they did. It was constantly there.

I don't have a journal; I write music.

My brother was a drummer, and he was always, like, smashing the kit around when I was a kid, and my dad was, like, one of them old musicians, and he played in, like, loads of different bands in the '70s and '80s. Him and my brother were kind of like my main inspirations.

When I was composing for 'The Villain,' I looked at it as a fan and came up with tunes accordingly.