Nigel Kennedy Quotes

• I'm always improving and I want to get better and never hit a plateau. I find it an amazing adventure.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Travel, Adventure, Get Better

  47 Copy quote

• If you do the same thing every night, that's the death of music.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Night, Every Night, Ifs

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• The Beatles are a classical group because they're classic.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Groups, Classic

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• I've learnt new scales through playing different types of music, like Indian raga scales, gipsy scales and harmonically-based jazz scales.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Different, Jazz, Scales

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• Maybe it's egocentric or whatever, but when I'm playing Beethoven, Bach, Hendrix, or whoever it is, in the end, it just feels like my own music and I'm making it up as I'm going along.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Hendrix, Ends, Feels

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• You can't learn pathos or profundity.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Pathos, Profundity

  "Nigel Kennedy accuses fellow violinists of destroying Bach's legacy" by Dalya Alberge, www.theguardian.com. August 13, 2011.

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• I think Bach is equally a romantic composer because he laid the seeds harmonically for people like Chopin and the great Romantics, Brahms, so its difficult to you know all this like labelling and putting - I think Bach is attractive to musicians because he supersedes the labels.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Thinking, People, Musician

  "The Music Show" with Andrew Ford, www.abc.net.au. February 20, 2010.

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• Even if you're playing Brahms or a Beethoven concerto, you've got to have a different vantage point, slightly, each time.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Different, Vantage Point, Brahms

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• I can think and play stuff in classical music that possibly violinists who didn't have access to other types of music could never do. It means I'm more flexible within classical music, to be a servant to the composer.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Mean, Thinking, Play

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• Bach was a top harmonist geezer, which is why the jazz cats love him.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Cat, Jazz, Cat Love

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• If you're playing within your capability, what's the point? If you're not pushing your own technique to its own limits with the risk that it might just crumble at any moment, then you're not really doing your job.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Jobs, Risk, Technique

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• I hate complacency. I play every gig as if it could be my last, then I enjoy it more than ever.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Hate, Play, Gigs

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• I see it as my job to try to keep Bach in the mainstream and present his music with, rather than without, its emotional core.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Jobs, Emotional, Trying

  "Nigel Kennedy accuses fellow violinists of destroying Bach's legacy" by Dalya Alberge, www.theguardian.com. August 13, 2011.

  5 Copy quote

• Menuhin was playing Bach on a fantastic spiritual level when he was a teenager.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Spiritual, Teenager, Levels

  "Nigel Kennedy accuses fellow violinists of destroying Bach's legacy" by Dalya Alberge, www.theguardian.com. August 13, 2011.

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