Piano Quotes - Page 30

• When I'm not touring, I sing at home, either at the piano or I'll pick up my guitar, singing old Buck Owens songs.

  Burton Cummings

  Song, Home, Guitar

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• The Steinway piano - with its beauty and power - is the perfect medium for expressing the performer's art, drama and poetry.

  Van Cliburn

  Art, Drama, Perfect

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• Eric's performance is an awesome and entirely honest expression of the pain and beauty of his music. To watch him play is like riding on the tail of a dragon, but he is so gentle with his rider, you forget how high up you are or how intense the ride is.   He is perhaps the most generous performer I have ever watched, every bit of himself is given to the audience.   He's like a Marina Abramovic with a piano, completely and deeply committed, regardless of that pain.

  Tea Leoni

  Pain, Dragons, Expression

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

  Mariska Hargitay

  Play, Eric, Divine

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• It is only by demanding the impossible of the piano that you can obtain from it all that is possible. For the psychologist this means that imagination and desire are ahead of the possible reality. A deaf Beethoven created for the piano sounds never heard before and thus predetermined the development of the piano for several decades to come. The composer's creative spirit imposes on the piano rules to which it gradually conforms. That is the history of the instrument's development. I don't know of any case where the reverse occurred.

  Heinrich Neuhaus

  Mean, Reality, Imagination

  Genrikh Gustavovich Neĭgauz, Heinrich Neuhaus (1973). “The art of piano playing”, Longwood Pr Ltd

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• Miss Petrowska,an excellent pianist, held the audience transfixed with Chou Wen-chung’s work. Miss Petrowska was coolness itself in getting the hardware into the piano and out again…in Messiaen, a feeling for the music’s reverent sobriety combined to produce an absorbing performance.

  Donal Henahan

  Sobriety, Missing, Feelings

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• A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument--a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself--in soli tude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Men, Artist, Symphony

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “Counsels and Maxims”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

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• You cannot play the piano by telling a pianist what to do, go a little more to the left or to the right. And the same is for the computer, really. You have to play yourself to get the most out of it.

  Massimo Vignelli

  Play, Littles, Computer

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Most of my music theory knowledge is based on piano. But I write on guitar a lot, too. I'm not a great guitar player by any means. I'm not a great instrumentalist. I play piano on stage. I don't play guitar on stage, but I use it to write quite a lot.

  Zooey Deschanel

  Writing, Mean, Player

  "Zooey Deschanel Can Play the Ukulele". Interview with Mark Mikin, www.esquire.com. July 17, 2009.

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• Once I started playing the piano, after my first small competition, I realized that the piano was the right instrument for me.

  Rafal Blechacz

  Competition, Firsts, Instruments

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• I'm improvising all the time. Everything I do is improvised. On the piano, at least.

  Mose Allison

  Improvising

  Interview with Jason Heller, www.avclub.com. April 2, 2010.

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• My dad was a self-taught stride piano player. The myth is - I don't whether it's true or not - that he taught himself to play by watching a player piano.

  Mose Allison

  Dad, Player, Self

  Interview with Jason Heller, www.avclub.com. February 04, 2010.

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• I started going to a piano teacher at 5 years old, but pretty soon I started picking things out on my own and stopped taking music lessons. I never could read music very well, but I've still been doing it.

  Mose Allison

  Teacher, Years, Lessons

  Interview with Jason Heller, www.avclub.com. February 04, 2010.

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• The family story tells, and it was told true,
  of my great-grandfather who begat eight
  genius children and bought twelve almost new
  grand pianos. He left a considerable estate
  when he died.

  Anne Sexton

  Children, Eight, Grandfather

  Anne Sexton (1964). “Selected poems”

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• And yet we constantly reclaim some part of that primal spontaneity through the youngest among us, not only through their sorrow and anger but simply through everyday discoveries, life unwrapped. To see a child touch the piano keys for the first time, to watch a small body slice through the surface of the water in a clean dive, is to experience the shock, not of the new, but of the familiar revisited as though it were strange and wonderful.

  Anna Quindlen

  Children, Discovery, Keys

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• The first song I ever learned to sing and play on the piano was 'I Remember Sky' when I was 10 years old. I remember thinking, This is the most beautiful song I will ever hear. And that remains true for me to this day. His music is the sole reason I wanted to be on Broadway. I wanted to sing music that transports us to the most important place one can travel, our hearts.

  Laura Benanti

  Beautiful, Song, Heart

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• I play any piano with a good tune.

  Pinetop Perkins

  Play, Tunes

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• I grew up hard. I picked cotton and plowed with the mule and fixed the cars and played with the guitar and the piano.

  Pinetop Perkins

  Guitar, Car, Cotton

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• Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with children's play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in "playing" chess or the piano. Play in this sense, then, is the fulfillment of work, the exhibition of what the work has been done for.

  Northrop Frye

  Children, Work, Thinking

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.145, University of Toronto Press

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• One encounters very capable fathers abashed by their piano-playing daughters. Three measures of Schumann make them red with embarrassment.

  Alfred Doblin

  Daughter, Father, Encounters

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• I feel like I always had a yin and yang experience with music. I've always been able to rock out, and then I've always had to take piano lessons, too.

  Son Lux

  Rocks, Yang, Lessons

  "Son Lux Lights Up". Interview with Frank Valish, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 4, 2013.

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• If you want to play piano, you just gotta love piano, and I loved the way that music sounded from the beginning. Always did - everything about an instrument I loved.

  Future

  Play, Want, Way

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I would just hear piano players and I would hear music, and just think - I don't just want to sit here and passively listen; I want to get inside it.

  Hugh Laurie

  Player, Thinking, Want

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• You know, it’s the same thing as the question of free will and destiny, the question of creativity - you, the artist, you’re not the puppet of the piano, you’re not the puppet of the muse, but you’re not its master, either. It’s a relationship, it’s a conversation, and all it wants is to be treated with respect and dignity - and it will return ten thousand times over.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Creativity, Artist, Destiny

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• Get up from the piano ... Oscar is in the house. Who wants to be at the piano when Oscar is there? Find something else to do.

  Benny Carter

  House, Want, Oscars

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