Top 30 Tenor Quotes

I’ve been listening to jazzmen, especially saxophonists, since the time of the early Count Basie records, which featured Lester Young. Pres was my first real influence, but the first horn I got was an alto, not a tenor.

I will sing whatever I’m given to sing. Growing up, I would sing anything that I was given. If the choir needed a first tenor, I would sing first tenor. If they needed a bass, I would sing bass. Throughout my life, I just figured out ways to hit notes I needed to hit.

My voice gets recognized before anything else. It’s always gotten attention. In choruses at church and school, I started as a tenor, moved to a baritone and finally became a bass. I knew then that my voice would be my instrument. Now if I want to hide, I just keep my mouth shut.

It is not infrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty – to oppress without control, or the restraint of laws, all who are poorer and weaker than themselves.

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.

Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.

I don’t have that kind of voice, the big baritone or rousing tenor sound. My wheelhouse was in the frothier pieces. So my appreciation for those older musicals and revivals grew.

I’m lucky because my repertoire is so specific, and theaters are interested in me singing my repertoire because it is not done so much. I’m pretty well settled in my repertoire. I like what I sing. My voice is high, and there is not much in baroque opera for higher tenor.

The tenor voice should be like sunshine.

You have to make a choice when you start to sing and decide whether you want to service the music, and be at the top of your art, or if you want to be a very popular tenor.

I am a tenor buff. I hear myself.

The cello is a hero because of its register – its tenor voice. It is a masculine instrument, whereas the violin is feminine because of its soprano pitch. When the cello enters in the Dvorak Concerto, it is like a great orator.

Slavery, though under modifications which rendered it little more than the apprenticeship of our day, was permitted under the Mosaic dispensation; but it is contrary to the whole tenor of Christianity; and a system which lowers man as an intellectual and responsible being is no less morally than politically wrong.

I don’t plan anything out, and I don’t write in chronological order. The emotional tenor is what guides me, but a lot of it is feeling my way through the dark. That’s okay if you have unlimited time to work and stumble upon things in a delightful way, but under a deadline, it can be really stressful.

I don’t know what I was trying to get out of a tenor – but it never really satisfied me until one day I picked up my alto and I said, ‘Where have you been?’ and I said right here for now on!

As much as I love creating entertaining visuals, I love toying with the pace of a movie and trying to perfect that. It’s imperative to the impact: faster cuts, cuts at the right moments that meld with the tenor of a scene. Creating and maintaining that feeling.

My father was a Norwegian tenor and my mother a New York Irish librarian.

The tenor of the comments as we got closer and closer to August got dominated by ‘Wouldja please get this over with’ and not let us go into default.

Even in today’s opera world, the position of the black tenor is problematic.

When I stepped down from the evening news at the age of 65, in ’81, things were still going well. Immediately after that, the whole tenor of the CBS News Department changed.

I made the tenor sax – there’s nobody plays like me and I don’t play like anybody else.

First off, you can’t replace Bobby Hatfield. I was just blessed to be able to sing with maybe the greatest singer in the world as a first tenor.

When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration.

I was three years old, and I walked onstage during a performance that my father was a tenor in ‘The Barber of Seville.’ I walked out onstage, and people started laughing and clapping, and that was it. That was all it took. Laughing and clapping, I still enjoy today.

These close losses, when they stack up, two, three, four, five in a row, they change the tenor of a season.

You know what I do on Sundays? I sing in a choir. I sing in a Greek Orthodox choir, and I’m the only hillbilly tenor in the Orthodox Church.

I got to sing with Placido Domingo… I got to sing with Aaron Neville, who is one of my favorites. Got to sing with Brian Wilson, one of the great high tenors. And Ricky Skaggs, a bluegrass tenor. I’m also proud of my musical friendship with Emmylou Harris.

In reply, I can only plead that a discovery which seems to contradict the general tenor of previous investigations is naturally received with much hesitation.

When I sing, I want people to think only about the tenor and only about the music.

We must demand a more civil tone and tenor in our politics.