Soulful Performance Quotes

God has blessed me with the in-born talent for which I pour my heart out in the form of music.

When the intellectual part of guitar playing overrides the spiritual, you don't get to extreme heights.

My favorite diva is Dame Shirley Bassey from the U.K. I just love that every song she sings becomes crazy and intense with feeling. That's how I feel in my daily life.

While playing complex characters you're staying in the same place but you're departing with your mind and soul and educating yourself until you can really understand such huge worlds. Those are the roles that keep loyal to the authenticity of what people are, and not caricatures. It's something that requires me to prepare for three, four months. I love the process of it, rather than, "Okay, I'm ready, I'm set with the wardrobe that somebody else chose for me."

When Elvis sang, it almost sounded like he was whispering. But after you heard the record, his voice was the strongest thing you ever heard. He was incredible.

Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it. Always love it.

Never lose yourself on the stage. Always act in your own person, as an artist. The moment you lose yourself on the stage marks the departure from truly living your part and the beginning of exaggerated false acting. Therefore, no matter how much you act, how many parts you take, you should never allow yourself any exception to the rule of using your own feelings. To break that rule is the equivalent of killing the person you are portraying, because you deprive him of a palpitating, living, human soul, which is the real source of life for a part.

Adele Adkins' retro-soul debut, '19', was striking less for her songs than for that voice: a voluptuous, slightly parched alto that swooped and fluttered like a Dusty Springfield student trying to upstage her teacher, or at least update the rules.

I've always been in love with Howard McGillen's voice, ever since I got wind of him.

The virtuoso element in jazz playing, all those very fast runs in the upper extremes, simply doesn't appeal to me. That's why I don't want to make my concerto "virtuosic" in the sense of a technical show-off. I want a beautiful sound and a melodic and lyrical line. I am more interested in the way someone can play musically.

I'm very soulful. I grew up singing in church. When I sing a song, I like to feel what I'm singing.

What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.

When I am most successful as a guitar player is when I'm able to just sort of lose myself. You stop thinking about technique or anything like that and just trying to evoke the emotion of that song brings, which is a very strong emotion for me.

I believe that Judy Garland's artistry was so fine. I mean, when people say: 'oh, she brought so much of her life to her music', I don't really believe that. I believe that she didn't have to. She just was a moving human being. That was her gift.

Cause there's nothing, there's nothing you can teach me That I can't learn from Mr. Hathaway.

There is far more sensitivity in acoustic guitar players than could ever be compared to any synthesizer. That's a personal point of view but that's the way I see it. I think that's what it's all about. The drive, the fire, the passion - it all comes out on the guitar.

When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.

Eric Lewis doesn't play the piano, he devours it. He doesn't play music, he channels the divine.

I was brought up singing gospel, and I really enjoy getting the church up on their feet, their hips swaying, their hands clapping, it's a great feeling to evoke that energy for the Lord.

What I loved with Billie Holiday is she had a good way of parlaying the sorrow with a positive musical twist.

Don Cornelius was a genius. He created a show where he was breaking artists' songs. If you were on his show, he made the consumer want to go out and purchase your music. He will be greatly missed. If they ever try to recreate what he did, it has to been done right, authentic and real with soul! That's what Don displayed.

We should pray and seek for knowledge which would enable us to portray and project the things we love in music, in a way that might wholly or in some part, be appreciated as having been conceived and composed or performed and presented with dedication and in positive taste

I don't think I ever sing the same way twice. The blues is sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing is part of my life.

Keyboardists whose chief asset is mere technique . . . more often than not astound us with their prowess without ever touching our sensibilities. They overwhelm our hearing without satisfying it and stun the mind without moving it.

You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.