When I was a kid, we had acoustic guitars, a piano in the house. I made a drum kit out of buckets in my garage.
If I’m happy and joyous, which I have been a lot in my life, thankfully, I’m usually not at the piano writing about it.
When I am back home, I have an upright piano and I play constantly.
I’ve had a lot of different responses to my films. I got a lot of support from ‘The Piano,’ the obvious one, but it feels like an ocean, with a lot going on – the goal is to keep alive.
I took piano lessons when I was like 5 or 6 but that was a long time ago. I stopped when I was 13.
My dad was a musician who went to Berklee, and he made me learn piano when I was five.
When Seymour saw me seated at the piano at that first rehearsal, he shouted: ‘What’s that kid doing here? Call your piano player and let’s get started.’
Mozart has written opera, symphony, sacred and chamber music – not to mention his piano and violin concerti.
I’ve always felt I struck out with Doris Day. Her son, Terry Melcher, was a producer I worked for at Columbia, and one day, he asked me to go to her house to play piano on a song she was doing. So I get there, and she has about 30 dogs running around the place – turns out she’s a dog rescuer.
I was never encouraged to do it and I played the accordion, which I hated. I wish I had taken piano because I definitely would have written more songs of my own, but I didn’t.
If you ask me about vocal technique, I don’t know anything. I could never be a teacher. I just know what my teacher told me: ‘Always sing with a full voice. When they tell you, less sound, more piano – no.’
All I need is a big surfboard and a piano.
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.
When you’re playing someone who drinks a lot, it’s not that interesting to play that condition because as soon as you know that, you got all the information you’re going to get from it. It’s like hitting the same note on the piano over and over again.
I’m basically a cocktail jazz kind of pianist. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a very good keyboard player. People think I think I’m good. I think I’m a very poor piano player.
I started playing piano with a little band in high school. I was terrible. I thought I had absolutely no talent. I couldn’t keep time. I only got into McGill, which was a lousy music school, because they were taking American music students.
I learned piano off YouTube and still do a lot. It’s hard to find contemporary indie music on there, at least lessons, because the reach is smaller. I did it so people like me out there could learn my songs if they wanted to and maybe, in a small way, to pay forward all the free lessons I’ve had over the years.
When you’re a child, you take things for granted. For instance, my mum didn’t have a lot of money, but I went to piano, ballet and gymnastics lessons, and tae kwon do.
Yes, my mother was a singer, and my father played piano and keyboards. They were in a band together, though they also had regular jobs because they had kids and stuff like that.
I think Ada in ‘The Piano’ is the most interior character I’ve ever had the chance to play, either on the stage or in anything I’ve done for film or TV.
My mother passed away when I was seven. She had a piano in the house that she was teaching my sisters how to play. That was where I first encountered music, through her.
Everyone at school knew I wanted to be a singer. I’d always be banging on the piano playing my new song. The teacher would gather us round, and the whole class would listen.
I don’t want costumes and makeup between me and the audience – I want more direct communication. There’s something for me about being honest on stage, and I’m at my most honest when I’m behind a piano. So I prefer my concert performances.
I had 12 years of classical music as a child, playing piano competitions as a teenager, playing in blues bands and rock ‘n’ roll bands, country and jazz bands. I played in about any situation.
I am so happy that I didn’t go to school and I didn’t have anyone to tell me how to position my fingers on the piano correctly. And what you do with music and what is the correct way to write it and what is not the correct way to write it.
I grew up with the British-Chicago crossover of house music with a lot of pianos and very heavy bass lines, but what I love about house is you can mix it up a bit.
I used to love ‘Jeeves And Wooster.’ That theme tune was great. I remember writing to them when I was little to get the music so I could learn it on the piano, and they sent me the sheet music.
I can play piano, and I write everything on piano, but I don’t really feel like a piano player, necessarily.
I’m quite proud of my piano playing. Robin’s never played a note on the piano at our recording sessions. I just wish I could be appreciated musically now.
I don’t go out much. I have people over, and I cook dinner, or we play the piano, or we watch TV.
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 do a long sound check. I get there at noon on the day of a show and sit behind the piano and then walk around with the microphone. Then I feel like I have done my homework.
I wake up in the morning, walk downstairs, and just bang on the piano and write about what’s going on in the world around me.
I play the piano, but I’m not classically trained.
Writing music is very, very clinical. You just sit down at a piano, map out a theme and when all the technicalities come together, out pours the music.
I first started playing in piano bars for three reasons – to make money, to be in the company of my friends – and also to hook up with young girls. I always knew, even before I played in piano bars, about the effect of my voice.
I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.
I went to the Conservatory, studying piano and singing, up to high school – but I only did four years because I then had to start working, and the jobs were so good that I didn’t stop.
I don’t think there’s any danger of me playing Indian music. However, I did a song of George Harrison’s ‘Beware of Darkness’ that was kind of like that. That was an illusion. I was playing that on a thumbtack piano, and Jim Gordon was playing tablas. He’s an amazing player. That was as close to India as I ever got.
Growing up I played piano and I sang at a lot of weddings; I grew up in a very small town, a little coal-mining town in Virginia called Grundy. And my family was very sing-songy at home.
A good interpreter can take a piece of bad music and make it sound pretty decent, while a bad interpreter can take good music and make it sound cheap. I can tell that some people have a bad taste, and unlike on the piano, they smear around a lot, that is bad taste.
I was drawing before I did music, but me, I’m a dilettante. I jump into everything until I find one thing that I enjoy more than others. Rap was something that was always there because my brother used to rap – piano and musical instruments is something I learnt on the way.
I still have a passion for the music, which is such a beautiful thing. I still wake up in the middle of the night out of a dream and have a melody in my head, and run to my piano.
I’ve had to be a man since I was 12 or 13. I had a job. And I was playing the piano for people twice my age. Handling responsibility is what makes a man a man.
I got started when I was 3 years old because my father was a music teacher and my lessons were free. Instead of learning to walk, you learn to play the piano.
I saw the film ‘Amadeus’ from when I was five, which made me want to take piano lessons.
The genome could be thought of as a kind of piano with twenty-five thousand keys. In some cases, a few keys may be out of tune, which can cause the music to sound wrong. In others, if one key goes dead the music turns into a cacophony, or the whole piano self-destructs.
Everything we did on the training pitch, we did with the ball. You’ll never see a pianist run around his piano. People ask me, ‘Why don’t you run through the forest, through the trees?’ Well, I’ve never seen a tree on a football field.
For a female artist, it takes a lot more to be taken seriously if you’re not sat down at a piano or with a guitar, you know?
American Ballet Theatre’s rehearsal studios are at 890 Broadway, an old building where exposed pipes clank and hiss in uneven accompaniment to piano music. The high ceilings wear a toupee of dust. The wall paint peels like a newbie ballerina’s toes.
Give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string; I wouldn’t get bored anywhere.
I’ve never really been interested in doing a solo piano tour.
My father, I think he played percussion in high school. My mother played piano when she was very young, but only for a brief while. I don’t think she had a great teacher. In any case, neither of them were really into music at a young age.
