My skills are musical, not lyrical.
We have the insight and the tools to identify and bring to fruition the dormant talent that our artists possess. Favored Nations will be branded as the home base for inspired musical talent.
The musical is the one area of the theater that can give you the biggest buzz of all.
I always try to think of a vocabulary to match different musical situations.
Every individual’s listening is as unique as his or her fingerprints because we all listen through filters that develop from our personal mix of culture, language, values, beliefs, attitudes, expectations and intentions. That is why one person’s musical taste is another person’s hideous noise.
I enjoyed acting growing up; I did musical theater. I had a secret desire to be a television and movie actress, but it wasn’t something I admitted to myself that I wanted to do, I guess.
After I retired and came off the road, I gathered up all my musical instruments and suddenly, I wanted them all to be perfect.
I always felt a love for music, but I never got my nerve up enough to try a musical instrument in school.
I’m trained in musical theatre and ‘Pitch Perfect’ is the first movie where I get to really belt out. I beat Adele for that role.
All musicians practice ear training constantly, whether or not they are cognizant of it. If, when listening to a piece of music, a musician is envisioning how to play it or is trying to play along, that musician is using his or her ‘ear’ – the understanding and recognition of musical elements – for guidance.
And the invention of transformations of certain figures has become the most important in musical composition.
It really surprises me that people in this day and age still write such busy music and fill up every space with layer upon layer of sound… it’s like musical landfill.
For your first musical in New York, to go to Broadway and be nominated for a Tony is a dream come true.
People who take risks like Amy Winehouse and Norah Jones take a second to catch on, but eventually they do because they’re different and honest in a musical landscape that’s not always like that.
There are certain sounds that I’ve found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music.
Since the age of 12, all my musical thinking has been influenced by Afro-American music.
I got the regular call, that they were doing a Broadway musical of Hairspray, and would I come and audition. I was familiar with the movie, because at the time it came out my lover wrote for Premiere magazine, and we had to see everything.
One of my biggest musical influences is definitely Ella Fitzgerald as a vocalist.
I’m personally more struck by visual things more than musical.
The greatness of Mac Rebennack, alias, Dr. John, also known as John Crieux, rests on his command of the musical use of idiomatic expression. Not a technically well-endowed singer, nor a great songwriter, he leaves his mark through the discipline and control he exerts over all that he touches.
That whole world of musical theater was my first love. It’s where I wanted to be when I was three years old.
You might say that Richard Wagner was the Queen Victoria of Europe. He had musical children everywhere!
Setting my mind on a musical instrument was like falling in love. All the world seemed bright and changed.
I clearly had a career in musical theater ahead of me and somewhere took a left turn and started getting all dour and serious and doing emotionally broken dukes.
I didn’t go to drama school to be a musical theatre performer. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t go to do that; I went to be an actor.
I always had a musical bone, I guess if you will.
At one point, I was hell-bent on being a Disney animator, and sort of got over that in college and wanted to do my own stuff. You know, towards the end of college I had actually planned to go to the Boston Conservatory of Music for musical theater.
I wanted to be an actor because I wanted to be onstage. I wanted to do musical theater, and from that I realized I was interested in plays. I never imagined myself on television. I was so lucky to be onstage my whole life.
To be recognized and accepted by my musical peers is truly an honor.
I loved ‘White Christmas’ for the music aspect. I was into musical theater.
Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.
Progressive music probably wouldn’t even really exist if not for the people of the United States having picked up on it and nurtured it in the way they did. It really is an American form of music in the sense that it was nurtured here. So it belongs here. It has become part of the fabric of American musical culture.
I told her it was a bigger than life musical, that all the actors were going to be about the same age, late twenties into thirties. It would be a style; a kind of surreal high school.
I like to work my camera as if it were a musical instrument.
Bluegrass has a very, very strict musical form. Once you start to dilute it, it disappears.
But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.
When I first got to New York, all I did was musicals. After a few years I had to make a conscious choice to close the door on musicals, because I was getting pigeon-holed as a musical theater performer.
I want to change things with everything I do, not for the sake of changing things, but for the sake of taking greater and greater risks, or how minimalist I might be able to be, or how I can involve elements or ingredients in music videos that are not musical, for instance.
Essentially a joke is creating an idea, whether sonic or visual, whether it’s something musical or a traditional joke.
If there is a good musical reason, I think it might draw more attention and sell, though it is not guaranteed. To make a record without a musical reason, you have to either be a pop star who sells automatically or just be lucky.
I mean, I did a film, a musical of ‘Scrooge’, in ’70, and the tricks were done by flat clothes and mirrors. I hope that the day will come when we don’t have to turn up at all.
I studied Shakespeare at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City, and ‘Orange’ was my first audition ever for TV or film.
The British ballads became a new kind of form in their hand. And out of them came the blues, a new kind of song of commentary and satire, a song form which, after all, has become the main musical form of the whole human species.
Musical theater is one of my passions.
I grew up doing musical theatre in Orlando, Florida. When I was 14, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time – a deliveryman heard me singing and offered to deliver my demo tape to Sony Music. I was just really lucky.
Band of Skulls is joining Cage the Elephant as my new musical caffeine.
I still will sit down at the piano and play when I am wrestling with something emotionally or just want to move into the musical world.
I’m a musical genius.
Being in a different band always brings great musical experiences to be able to draw on.
I was a little bit wary of playing Nicholas. In the script, which I think is true of the novel and the film, he’s the only character not singing and dancing in a musical style. Playing someone who is the personification of good is a little difficult.
Musical harmony is based on physical principles, while in cooking, ingredients must be weighed out with precision. At the same time, you have to be able to invent because if one follows the same recipe all the time, you never create anything new.
The blues is a mighty long road. Or it could be a river, one that twists and turns and flows into a sea of limitless musical potential.
There is an assumption that if you’re young and pretty, you will get all these opportunities that are way beyond your musical foundation.
‘Allegiance’ is pretty much a book musical. You know, people talk and then they burst out into song.
I’m not like my siblings, who are musical but can turn their hands to other professions! I’d always wanted to be involved in music – I’m a great believer in doing things that fulfil you.
I remember really bonding with the first generation kids, the Chinese Canadian kids, and in high school bonding with the Latin kids and the East Indian kids. It was very interesting because it made me open to lots of musical sounds.
A lot of people on the internet have been saying that there’s no way we can pull off a musical in three acts. We just take that as a challenge.
When you shoot a musical, you’re shooting to lipsynch tracks, so we had to figure out our choreography and work out what we wanted to do with each number before we did it.
People in Britain always think of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ as a musical – it wasn’t.
Basically, I’m a musical vocalist, but I do voiceover stuff as a sideline, like plumbing or something.
Ironically, that was quite a bit of the appeal of Rumours. It’s equally interesting on a musical level and as a soap opera.
I would love to have a varied career, like Hugh Jackman. He started in musical theater, then established himself in film, but he still does a lot of stage work. And he does it all beautifully.
