Top 60 Brian Stokes Mitchell Quotes

I can’t remember ever not singing.

I don’t recommend skipping college, but things have worked out for me.

I love the theater, and I just don’t love television like that.

I didn’t really think I liked jazz all that much until I was about 18. That’s when the freedom and possibilities of it began to seem appealing to me.

Left to my own devices, I would go to bed at 2:30 or 3, but I can’t do that if I’m getting up at 6:50!

Doing eight shows a week is hard.

When you’re doing eight shows a week, you don’t have much of a personal life.

For a while, I couldn’t get arrested in television because everybody thought of me as that guy on ‘Trapper John.’ So I thought, ‘Great, I’ll come out here to New York and do some theater, and when they get tired of me, I’ll do something else.’

The older I get, I realize, ‘Man, I’m a very rare bird,’ and that’s not because of necessarily my talent or ability; it so much depends on luck and just the grace of the universe.

Astaire was ballroom, basically, and Gene Kelly had such athleticism – that’s always what I responded to and what just blew my head open when I watched Gene Kelly’s numbers. But, Fred Astaire was just so incredibly inventive and so, so smooth – so smooth.

I was practically raised with Christmas music.

Music, for me, is the most sacred of the arts. I say that because music communicates in a way that no other art form can. All great art has a spirit that we recognize and appreciate, but music goes directly to your heart.

Usually, I don’t feel comfortable with a character until I’ve played him before an audience for several performances. It is not until after three months of performing that I learn to discover what I call ‘all the nooks and crannies’ of the person.

I have been fortunate in my career to play a lot of lead roles. The downside to that is I don’t have a life outside of the show. I go on lockdown even with my wife if the show is really difficult and I am having vocal problems.

There’s a lot of risk involved in acting, and you can’t take the same kind of risks when you have a kid to feed.

I kind of feel the career chose me. My motto has always been, ‘Go where I’m wanted.’

That’s the magic of art and the magic of theatre: it has the power to transform an audience, an individual, or en masse, to transform them and give them an epiphanal experience that changes their life, opens their hearts and their minds and the way they think.

When you have a community that’s strong in the arts, it brings all sorts of attention and different businesses into the community.

People who are artists professionally are not artists because they want to be artists; they have to be artists. They’re compelled to get that creativity out and to share that with others.

The first role that I played as a musical – I was 14 years old, and I played Birdie in ‘Bye Bye Birdie.’ That was an awakening of, ‘Wow, I’m good at that. People are responding.’ And I hardly knew what I was doing back then, but there was something that people were seeing.

I always like to talk about how important space is. Art is in the spaces. Anybody can sing a note; it takes an artist to sing the spaces. Anybody can paint a brushstroke; it takes an artist to know when not to put the brushstroke.

I started out on the stage, then I had a great career in television for quite a few years. The good news about a TV series is that they give you a certain amount of fame and money. The bad news is that you’re in people’s living rooms every week and get associated with a particular character.

The first time I really had an influence on a show was during ‘Ragtime.’ It’s still the most magical show that I’ve ever done.

I always say it takes three weeks to know a character and three months to own it. And I think that’s probably true of every theater artist. If you really want to see a performance of the show, wait three months.

You lose more than you win in life, and that’s OK. That’s the nature of life.

Years ago, I couldn’t get arrested in commercials because of my look: ‘Is he Jewish, Hispanic, or African-American?’ I ended up doing voiceover work, which has been great. Honestly, I can’t complain.

My father was a huge jazz fan, so I remember him playing Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughn, and Count Basie.

If you can make an audience laugh, you can make them love any character.

Honestly, I hate watching myself on TV – I have always hated watching myself and listening to myself.

I’d always been a huge fan of Stephen Schwartz.

I studied arranging and orchestration a number of years ago, so I have a home studio and arrange about three-fourths of my songs on the computer. Since writing orchestration is tedious, I often put an arrangement on the keyboard and let someone better-qualified finish it.

I love rearranging and reimagining tunes, so I want my audience to enjoy hearing songs in a new way and make their own discoveries.

It’s nearly impossible to make a living in the arts.

Each time I have performed in Utah, I had a great time, and the audiences seem to enjoy what I do. The audiences are very warm and very appreciative.

Music is liquid. It’s meant to be messed with and played with and stretched and pulled and pushed, I think.

The first audition I did was for ‘Trapper John, M.D.’ I was surprised to get the part, and then to have it last for seven years was a bonus.

I’ve sung a whole lot of jazz. It’s my favorite style of music to sing. People don’t realize it, because they’re so accustomed to hearing me sing musical theater.

The Actors Fund is a human services organization, so our focus has been on caring for the entire human as opposed to dealing with the disease.

On Broadway, you are working with some incredible people, and they have great reasons for doing things the way they do.

People in the performing arts have a lot of other skills they don’t realize they can utilize, and part of what the Actors Fund program is there to do is wake their head up to realize there are other things they can do.

I like to sing the songs people love, like ‘Impossible Dream.’

I can count on one hand the number of conductors-composers-arrangers that I enjoy working with, and at the top of that list is Mack Wilberg. I feel like I’ve known Mack forever. I’m just nuts for him.

One of the best pieces of wisdom I ever got is you work because you work, meaning you work because you’re saying yes to things, and you’re connecting with people.

That’s what I love about New York. So many people crowded together, pushing against one another. And that’s what I hate about New York. So many people crowded together, pushing against one another.

My favorite music is jazz, actually. It’s what I listen to, it’s what I was raised on, and it’s what I prefer to sing.

I love seeing the stars, and I love being around my friends and family.

Cabaret presents different challenges, as it is all on me. I love having the freedom to say anything you want – do anything you want. It is a lot of responsibility, and if it works, you get all the kudos, and if not – all the blame.

What I love about piano and vocal is it’s incredibly pure, and it gets down to the essence of the song because you’re not distracted by an orchestra. When it’s just a piano and a voice, it’s about the purity of singing the song.

I’m not a pop singer; I’m not a jazz singer. And I know I sing like not a whole lot of people do; I also know that a lot of other people act like I do. And better than I do. But what informs the singing is the acting. They’re not separate from each other.

If anything, when I was young, I wanted to be an orchestra.

‘Kiss Me, Kate’ was my ‘Ragtime’ Tony.

Oddly enough, I almost never listen to show tunes. But there are some shows I love, like Adam Guettel’s ‘Floyd Collins.’

Variety is the key to not being bored.

I gravitate to rhythmic music, so I listen to jazz, world music, Indian music, Hawaiian music, all kinds.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I thought, ‘Whatever hits, I’ll go that direction. If it’s music, fine; if it’s acting, fine.’

At our house, we’d always open presents with our Christmas records playing. ‘Little Drummer Boy’ was one of my favorites when I was a kid because it was about a kid.

I’d been playing the piano since I was 6 and wanted to be a composer, but I also wanted to be an actor. I decided to just pursue both and see which won out.

I’ve always felt that my career was in wiser hands than mine. Whatever, in its good time, is supposed to happen will happen.

I like being different people.

I hate those vacuous musicals, the happy-happy, ‘Let’s have a good time’ shows.