Joshua Bell Quotes

Over the years it has been my privilege to lead performances with Saint Louis, the National Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra and so many other wonderful organizations.

You go to a pop concert or a classical concert but there's nothing in between.

I was raised on pop music. Anything classical ran together in a complicated blur.

We can't afford big symphonies but we commission works that sound rich and symphonic because of the nature of the instrumentation and the people we work with.

I approach everything as chamber music. Even with Beethoven symphonies, I lead from the violin and basically encourage the orchestra to think of it as a giant string quartet.

My family were all into classical music, and I found that very intimidating.

They believed you can't mix rock, country, and rap, and that crossover is dead. I always knew it would work. And it will always work as long as you're really into it and like what you're doing.

Growing up with country, R&B, gospel, and classical music from my grandmother and pop, Tuskegee was the perfect melting pot for my influences as a writer.

I just loved classical music, but I also loved playing rock guitar, and I loved playing piano, so it was a natural thing that those things would merge at some point.

I pride myself on being the type of artist who can work half in the R&B world and half in the pop world.

I grew up listening to hipster jazz and classical records... we went and watched ballet and orchestras - lots of cool stuff. Which I'm really grateful for - it's pretty nice being introduced to that when you're little.

For us, it is all about breaking the boundaries between different genres of music and combining different styles of music and performing what we are passionate about. We are so lucky that we can experience both worlds: the more intimate classical world and the wild and crazy world of rock n' roll.

I think the musicians I play with solo do a certain thing that the musicians we play with with the Indigo Girls don't do. It's just a different thing. And it sort of steers my writing in some ways.

I'd like to explode a few myths about what we call classical music. It's not high art for the titillation of a chosen few.

You're now getting a new breed of people like Il Divo and Andrea Bocelli and I think that's why people feel less intimidated by classical music than they once did.

I grew up with classical music blasting in my parents' living room and my older brother's practicing saxophone in his room listening to jazz... a beautiful chaos.

I belong to the Richmond Concert Society, who put on very good concerts.

In or orchestra we have many nationalities, types, and temperaments.

I got thrown out of music school for even listening to Fats Domino and Ray Charles. I was asked, 'What kind of music do you like to listen to?' and I said, 'Well, I do like Paul Hindemith and Igor Stravinsky but I also like Fats Domino and Ray Charles,' and they literally said, 'Either forget about that or leave.'

I've got a superstar like Usher singing bachata, a tune featuring Lil Wayne. I'm offering people more than just bachata. That captures a new audience that would listen to bachata because Usher is singing.

My basic grammar is in Indian classical music, Carnatic music, and Hindustani music, but I don't believe that that is the only form of music I will learn. I don't believe in that, because I am a very open minded person.

My whole life, I've always had one foot in the classical world and one foot in the rock, pop, and folk world.

I think, until I was 16, classical music had just seemed like a little bit of a rhythmic wasteland for me. Coming from bluegrass, where one conducts oneself rhythmically, it seemed like such a different approach, and at that point the difference that I was noticing was a real turn off to me.

Classical music gives musicians a kick. But African music gives everyone a kick.

I grew up in a family that was very musical, learned the blues and everything like that. And I became a little bit frustrated with the simplicity of rock n' roll and blues. I started listening to a lot of classical music - mainly Bach, Vivaldi.