I was lucky Mozart was not eligible this year.
I had classical training but I don't consider myself an opera singer though.
I was listening to a lot of bebop. And to Miles Davis. Everyone thinks I was just in the folk world in 1966, but in 1963 and 1964, I was absorbing enormous amounts of music, from baroque to jazz to blues to Indian music.
I'm a self-taught guitarist, but I have a classical music background.
I've seen the Mass For The End Of Time in concert but my brother's the more musical one really.
[on Richard Wagner] A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.
I became a professional musician and played all kinds of music. I played bluegrass, I played classical music, and for many years, I played jazz.
I always had a feeling, for example, that there should be something from Verdi's "Requiem" in the film. You hear it when you see the lava flow in Iceland. That turned out to be a very easy choice.
When I think of Boris Diaw, I think of Beethoven in the age of the romantics
I never took guitar lessons. I took classical piano lessons from the age of six when we lived in Holland.
At a certain place in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards.
I've been classically trained in piano since I was little. My father was a pianist, so they started me early.
I was always into classical music and opera because I played the piano as I went through school and was very interested in Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals and stuff like that. That changed into heavy metal at around the age of 14 or 13, and I dropped the piano and started to play the guitar.
Gershwin inspired me very much. The concept of 'That Lucky Old Sun' was inspired by 'Rhapsody in Blue' - not influenced, but inspired.
My father was always playing the piano. He played all kinds of music - Gershwin, all kinds of stuff.
Take opera for example - to go to the opera you have to dress up in a tuxedo and pay lots of money.
I believe in God, Mozart, and Beethoven.
It was really amazing. I mean, he'd never mentioned that he played in the symphony, like serious violin playing, not fiddle playing. And he just blew us away.
I don't think any of the early Romantic composers knew how to write for the piano... The music of that era is full of empty theatrical gestures, full of exhibitionism, and it has a worldly, hedonistic quality that simply turns me off.
Mozart's music always sounds unburdened, effortless, and light. This is why it unburdens, releases, and liberates us.
You can't get down and dirty at the opera.
For me, Bach is like Shakespeare. He has known all and felt all. He is everything.
As a kid, I loved classical music. Composers like Beethoven were like rock stars to me. Then there were the real rock stars: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan.
That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.
I took classical piano lessons from the age of five.
