Innovative Composer Quotes

Charlie Parker stuck out in my mind.

Thelonius Monk was not exactly 'the guy next door'.

Louie Bellson represents the epitome of musical talent. His ability to cover the whole musical spectrum from an elite percussionist to a very gifted composer and arranger never ceases to amaze me. I consider him one of the musical giants of our age.

I'd love to work with Sufjan Stevens. He so gets it. He's amazing.

To me, Mozart is our Shakespeare, the one who wrote the most dramatic, psychologically most baffling music. He combined ideas that no one else would have thought of putting together.

I used to think of George Michael as being mechanical, like a scientist in a white coat, working in a laboratory, creating perfect harmonies, and all the while I was secretly admiring him.

Duke Ellington is my choice for many reasons. Nobody has written so many great pieces of music, which are everlasting, and he has made them available to the world through his orchestrations of his work in a unique way. Lastly, he was himself a fine pianist. He covers the entire musical spectrum with his genius.

Charles Ives was writing radically innovative music, but nobody performed it, and nobody knew about it.

Glenn Gould was my hero. Glenn Gould was my idol. I loved him.

Webern was a kind of 'Kamchatka of music,' an unknown country of music. That's true; for me and people of my generation, he was a radical - you couldn't be more radical than he was.

Frank Zappa... was Beethoven for insane rock guys.

Jerry Goldsmith, I have to say, is my single favorite composer of all time. He was one of the most innovative guys ever to do it. You go back to 'Planet of the Apes' and it is just a monumental score - the sound design and approach to percussion was just so extraordinary. One of his great scores for me was 'Alien.'

You can never criticize a monumental musician like Jon Lord or Richie Blackmore, or the part they played in the group, but life goes on.

Many people think of me as a modernist, as a radical in music, you know, someone who's always sort of at the avant-garde of musics, but I'm also quite a traditionalist.