Pianist Quotes

I knew I had a remarkable voice, but I was embarrassed because it was so high. But when I sang at my bar mitzvah, the rabbi was in tears. He said to my parents, ‘He must become a cantor in the synagogue,’ but my mother said, ‘No, he’s going to be a concert pianist.’

When I was first starting out as a kid, I tried to pad my resume with everything I had ever done – ice-skate, carry a tune. I can’t dance for my life, but I can learn, so I’ll tell people I can dance. I play the piano – I’m a really good pianist, actually.

The people who raised me musically are my mother, who is a classically trained pianist, and my stepfather.

My mother was the first woman in the county in Indiana where we were born, in Jay County, to have a college degree. She was educated as a pianist and she wanted to concertize, but when the war came she was married, had a family, so she started teaching.

My mother was a very talented pianist, and she was a music teacher who hated to teach music, actually, but she loved to play, so I was brought up with Chopin, Debussy and Mozart.

‘Andhadhun’ is the most challenging film and character. For playing the role, first and foremost I had to learn how to play the piano and then how to emulate gestures of a blind pianist.

When a little more than a teenager, I was a piano-bar pianist in the land where I was born and raised, Tuscany.

The person I call my secret weapon is an arranger, pianist and musical director, Herman Jackson.

The pianist Cecil Taylor is extremely melodic; the guitarist Derek Bailey is extremely melodic, and Ornette Coleman.

My dad‘s family were political and he was always a theatrical creature, whereas my mum is really musical and her father was the touring pianist with Nat King Cole. My family was an explosive mixture of politics, religion and music – no wonder I turned out how I did.

I was going to be a concert pianist, and when I was in high school, my parents were scared to death that I would focus too much on that too soon. And that I’d end up in some sort of dead end, and not fulfilling whatever potential they thought I had.

When I was very young, I remember my mother telling me about a friend of hers in Germany, a pianist who played a symphony that wasn’t permitted, and the Germans came up on stage and broke every finger on her hands. I grew up with stories of Nazis breaking the fingers of Jews.

When Hank Jones had his night off, I would get somebody to take my place as intermission pianist and I’d play the show with Ella, so I would get a chance to play with Ray Brown and Charlie Smith as well.

My parents told me I would become a doctor and then in my spare time I would become a concert pianist. So, both my day job and my spare time were sort of taken care of.

Four Tet is somebody I respect a lot. There are other artists I admire like jazz pianist and composer Marc Moulin.

I have great respect for Senator Cochran and the years of service he gave to Mississippi and the nation. I’ll do my best to measure up to the standard he set as public servant – and as a pianist.

My dad had these great Benny Goodman albums that I was obsessed with, and Louis Prima‘s another guy I loved, and Peter Niro the jazz pianist. I loved international music: Irish music, Mexican music. I love the different colours that they all have.

Originally I studied as a musician, a classical pianist. That was my career before I took up acting in my late 20s.

My only wish would be to have 10 more lives to live on this planet. If that were possible, I’d spend one lifetime each in embryology, genetics, physics, astronomy and geology. The other lifetimes would be as a pianist, backwoodsman, tennis player, or writer for the ‘National Geographic.’

I’ve loved musical theater ever since I was a kid. My mother’s a pianist, and my grandfather was an amateur theater director and stand-up comic. And I was an only child. And I loved attention. So from an early age, my family was teaching old musical songs.

Whenever I open a book about jazz, I turn to the index and look for Lennie Tristano, the incredible pianist; Lee Konitz, the luminous alto sax player; and Warne Marsh, the tenor player who captured some of the most beautiful sounds in the world.

My body is an object of work. That’s why I think to be an actor is one of the most violent jobs. If you‘re a pianist, you have your piano. If you’re a guitarist, you have your guitar. But if you’re a dancer, or you’re an actor – your instrument is your body.

Mum was a brilliant classical pianist. She was Canadian and studied music at McGill University. She took me to ballet when I was a little girl, and those are some of my happiest memories.

My dad Chester was a pianist and later a well-known television entertainer so football was never really something that was on his radar. However when I was a young boy a family friend took me to see an Arsenal game and from that moment on I was totally and utterly hooked.

My mother was a classical pianist and my stepfather was an industrialist who was passionate about composing contemporary music.

At the age of 16, something happened with my finger and the doctor told me, you never can be a organist or pianist, so think about what you do with music.

My mother adores singing and plays piano. My uncle was a phenomenal pianist. My brother John is a double bassist. I used to play the piano, badly, and cello. My brother Peter played violin.

But my mom was a pianist, and she taught piano out of her house. I was just so excited, being a little kid and having all these other kids come to my house twice a week. I thought it was a big party.

Once I understood Bach‘s music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world.

The collective conscience of a hundred musicians is no light burden. Think for a moment of what it would mean to a pianist if by some miracle every key of his instrument should suddenly become a living thing.

I decided during my teens that I wasn’t going to have the life of a concert pianist, much to the chagrin of a lot of people who had put a lot of money into me!

When I was young, I played the piano and studied classical music and jazz. I wanted to be a concert pianist, and if I’d devoted myself to it, I could have been. But it would have been too much work and a very lonely life.

My grandmother was a classical pianist, so I grew up with Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven. I studied piano as a kid. My musical background and upbringing was very much a mix.

Painting is something that you need to do, if not every day, then certainly most days. It is almost like being a pianist: if you stop, you lose something.

I like Stevie Wonder as my favorite non-pianist pianist. I mean, I shouldn’t call him a non-pianist, because he’s really a great pianist, but he doesn’t feature it that much – he uses his keyboards and his piano technique to support his great songs and so forth, but he can really blow.

If you don’t know Tom Lehrer, you should – in addition to being a classical pianist, mathematician, songwriter, satirist, researcher at Los Alamos and, he claims, inventor of the Jell-O shot, he is just delightfully funny and graceful.

My family was musical on both sides. My father’s family had a famous flautist and a classical pianist. My mother won a contest to be Shirley Temple‘s double – she was the diva of the family. At 8, I learned how to play guitar. I used to play songs from the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s in the kitchen for my grandmother.

I actually started as a concert pianist. I had a scholarship to the Julliard School of Music.

I wanted to be a veterinarian until I saw a video of a vet performing surgery on a dog. Then I decided I wanted to be a pianist.

I’d seen how ‘Green Book’ had been a box-office hit, but left pianist Don Shirley’s family feeling betrayed because his life and relationships had been distorted.

When I was younger, I always wanted to be either a pianist or a classical singer, and when I discovered songwriting, it was like a new portal had been opened.

To try and learn how to be a singer, a really good guitar player, a really good pianist, it’s always lagged a bit behind learning to be the best songwriter I could possibly be because songwriting comes naturally to me.

I was drawn to it much to my father’s dismay. He wanted me to be a pianist like he was, but I had coarser tastes – like that old joke: What do you call a guy who hangs around with musicians? A drummer.

I don’t regard myself as a great classical or jazz pianist. I like country music, but I’m not a great player. I just like music. Drums ‘n’ bass is pretty exciting and I’d love to explore it.

My mother wanted me to be a concert pianist.

My wife is an incredible pianist. I don’t think there’s anything my wife can’t do, in all actuality.

I used to be a very serious pianist, and I was one of the snot-nosed classical ones who was appalled by nightmares of Ethel Merman and trombones blasting in the background and who knows what else.

I was for a minor amount of time but I was probably a better pianist at 15 than I am now.

I’m a pianist – I studied jazz piano in college.

The vanishing of David Tang is like the unthinkable diappearance of a magnificent palace on a mythical mountaintop. He was a dreammaker, pianist, adventurer, writer, entrepreneur, scholar, connoisseur, and a great friend.

In jazz, you listen to what the bass player is doing and what the drummer is doing, what the pianist and the guitarist is doing, and then you play something that compliments that, so you are thinking simultaneously and thinking ahead.

The one who really captured me and became my absolute favorite was Nat King Cole. He was a genius at what he did. Most people don’t realize what a great pianist he was. After listening to him for years, I finally met him, and he was the nicest human being.

I can’t get anything out of an orchestra if I have the 10 best guitarists, but I don’t have a pianist or a drummer.

My mother is a poet/novelist, and my father was a pianist and cook. Both artists who colored my personality and brain in ways I’m still discovering!

There were two things I used to do to seduce girls: jokes and music. Since I’m not a great pianist, jokes were my thing.

Until I was about 16 years old, my dream was to be a musician. I played in rock bands and jazz bands. Then I decided to be an actor and kept the stable career of ‘jazz pianist’ as my safety net.

Mother, being a pianist, told me how to play with my fingers on the piano.

Someone who gave me a lot of confidence was my friend Martin Taylor, he’s the most famous man in Bolton. He is a pianist and used to play in one of the local pubs. He would sing everything from classical to rock to pop. He was amazing.

I changed it to Leslie Hill, only that seemed more like a cocktail pianist. Eventually, being an admirer of Jack Benny, I took his name.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‘I’d like to write about that.’ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

My mother Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck was a pianist who studied with Dame Myra Hess and Tobias Matthey. As a child in California I used to listen to her play Chopin.

In Montreal, there is a friend of mine at school who is a jazz pianist with an amazing voice, and we sort of have this fusion/soul/R&B/folk music kind of thing. We’ve been keeping it low-key and opening for some friends.

I’m a classically trained jazz pianist – I’ve been playing since I was 3 years old.

I’ve been classically trained in piano since I was little. My father was a pianist, so they started me early.

Have you ever heard of a pianist who never had to practice – or of an architect who didn’t bother to find out why buildings stand up?

From early on there were two things that filled my life – music and storytelling, both of them provoked by my father. He was a jazz pianist and also a very good storyteller, an avid reader. He passed both those interests on to me.

I don’t think I’m even close to fulfilling my potential. And I think also that, unlike a pianist or a flutist, an actor has an instrument that is constantly changing.

Just play football. If you are a writer, you must write. It’s the best way to practise. If I’m a pianist, I don’t need to run in the forest for one hour or two hours to be a good pianist. I must play piano. So this is what we are doing all the time. Play football. Simple ideas.

I couldn’t say I ever dreamt of becoming a composer, a pianist, or anything else for that matter. I have the kind of brain where nothing is set in stone.

My mother, Minuetta Kessler, was a concert pianist and composer who performed at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall.

Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg, Berg imply a type of pianist who is intellectual. That’s not always associated with female soloists.

My mother always wanted to play an instrument. Her parents never gave her that. Then it got to a point where I’d been playing for 18 years, and to give it up would make me feel guilty. But my parents also knew that realistically, I wasn’t going to become a concert pianist.

To search for a pianist, it is very difficult; sometimes you find one.

I took some lessons as a kid but trained myself by ear. I did it the way jazz musicians used to learn years ago, which is to play records and slow them down to figure out the notes. At first I tried to imitate Red Garland, who was my favorite jazz pianist.

I was depressed for a year after ‘The Pianist,’ and I don’t suffer from that, generally. It wasn’t just a depression; it was a mourning.

I wanted to be a pianist but it just wasn’t my thing. I guess I wanted to stand up rather than sit down.

I’ve had to ban my mum from coming to see me play. She gets so nervous before any show. I’ve always got a few nerves but she’s so much worse than me. You’d think she’d be able to handle that kind of situation. After all, she is a concert pianist.

When a pianist sits down and does a virtuoso performance he is in a technical sense transmitting more information to a machine than any other human activity involving machinery allows.

My father was a banker, but he was an independent spirit. He was a very good pianist and very much into music.

My father was a stone mason, and a talented amateur pianist and vocalist.