Most of my life, I feel I have been Unicycling at the Edge of the Abyss! If fact, this will be the name of my book if I ever write one, or a one man stand up routine. I have used it as the name of a collection of my musical compositions written during the ’90s. It fits the scary journey I feel I’ve been on.
I don’t know why the guys with the big money don’t find five terrific young producers and give each of them enough to commission a musical and to live on for a year. You’d be likely to get at least one project with a future.
My musical tastes change every week.
Silence is more musical than any song.
You don’t go see Primus to see what kind of new clothing I’m wearing or what my new hairdo is. You come to see Primus for the musical experience and the visual experience. I think, anyways. Maybe I’m wrong!
I always wanted to be a comedian but never thought I’d be a musical comedian.
I don’t want to do free jazz! Because free jazz – which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering – isn’t actually free at all. It’s just constrained by what your muscles can do.
‘High School Musical’ is definitely the best thing that’s happened to my career and I walked away with great friends from it.
I’m very driven, and I always have been. So I’d like to release a successful album, continue in musical theatre, and be more involved in business.
For me, Venezuela is very important, not just because it’s a place I go to conduct, but because my family is there – my wife, my parents and my musical family.
Our last jam session was this past Christmas. Dad played his harmonica, mom sang in English and Italian, and I played guitar. I’m so happy that we could share that musical experience for one last time.
There was a technique to making a musical. It took a long time for the studios to learn it, and it was very complicated.
Slowly poetry becomes visual because it paints images, but it is also musical: it unites two arts into one.
I have intentionally not pursued musical theater.
Over the years, I’ve collected a lot of musical friends.
‘The Rocky Horror Show’ was actually my first musical love.
I’m not a superstar, per se… but I’m a musical creator – a producer in the same vein as what Quincy Jones was, or Pharrell and Timbaland were.
I’m really eager to go back and do some theater. I would love to do some more comedy as well because I think that’s really the hardest thing to do; it’s what I grew up doing, and I would love to go back and do that. I did a lot of theater growing up – musical theater.
I know the musical world as well as I know the comedy world.
Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited – that has music and rhythm and time.
I am in musical theatre, but it isn’t necessarily what I listen to in my leisure time, do you know what I mean?
My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter.
My family’s a very musical family, so music’s always been a part of my life.
After ‘The Blues Brothers,’ I wanted to do a good musical number with real dancers and shoot it correctly.
When I used to do musical theatre, my dad refused to come backstage. He never wanted to see the props up close or the sets up close. He didn’t want to see the magic.
I think I’m more influenced, just in general, not by blues artists, but more by stuff from Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder is probably my biggest musical influence of all. And Donny Hathaway.
I went into musical theatre, which I’m not really cut out for – I’m not as skilled at it as other people.
It’s a beautiful thing to have time in the world, as a singer and as a musician, to make friends with people of the musical caliber of a Tommy Smith, an Arturo Sandoval, a Richard Galliano, a Till Broenner.
I’ve been buying instruments and musical gear for a long time.
Jazz is a racist musical form invented by whites to enslave blacks.
My own musical ambitions were born when I was five, watching the Ed Sullivan Show on TV. When Elvis Presley burst on to the screen, singing ‘Don’t Be Cruel,’ I felt my first sexual thrill, though I didn’t know what it was at the time.
Music is rhythm, and all theater is rhythm. It’s about tempo and change and pulse, whether you’re doing a verse play by Shakespeare or a musical.
I used to do puppet theatre and also mime and musical theatre in Florida for competitions and festivals, which was great. I was very much involved in theatre when I was in college.
Well, I love Bob Dylan, let’s make that clear. He’s one of my musical heroes.
My mom was an amazing singer and music was a big part of my life, so I grew up listening to Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Henry Mancini; I used to watch ‘The Andy Williams Show’ on TV. I was very musical, so I was watching stuff that most kids my age wouldn’t be interested in.
The greatest musical instrument given to a human being is the voice.
I was a ballet dancer and that kind of bled into musical theater. I was constantly in rehearsal for one thing or another.
I have a fantastic studio in my home, and it’s my biggest toy. I have about a half a million dollars worth of musical equipment in my house.
I’d rather have a hundred thousand or a million people saying I’m nuts and I’m crazy for my musical choices and what I’ve said lyrically, than a million people all raising their hand on the first day.
Yes, indeed, in fact I would tell you that we go out of our way to be true to the original feeling and sort of sonic and musical pallet that we painted with back then.
As we get older… I don’t know a single person who has devoted their life to musical theatre who hasn’t had a couple of misses as well as a bunch of hits. The misses, we learn a great deal from them.
One thing is certain: We can’t go back. The musical will never be the same as it was.
I think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.
Setting my mind on a musical instrument was like falling in love. All the world seemed bright and changed.
I think that New York is the city of all cities. There is so much diversity there. I also like that when I go there, I can catch a play or musical and see some of the most talented people practicing their craft.
I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.
I tried singing. I tried playing a musical instrument. I really wanted to be a musician, but I never could quite pull that off. I liked entertaining, but I was always drawn to some kind of technical work – some kind of honest labor.
I was like, ‘I’m only going to do musical theater for the rest of my life. I’m never going to do TV.’ And whenever I’d get auditions for TV, I’d be like, ‘Okay, whatever. I’ve got a lisp, so they’re not going to take me.’ And then I started doing this, and I guess it was my sister that got me into the acting thing.
I had a teacher senior year in high school. He was a theater teacher, and he basically was a little bit like ‘High School Musical.’ He kind of encouraged the jocks to get involved with the plays. I did it as kind of a senior year lark.
Andy Rourke and I had been playing together from 14 or 15, and we had a very great musical chemistry. Andy’s just a very respected and unusual musician.
Some are blessed with musical ability, others with good looks. Myself, I was blessed with modesty.
Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.
I kind of go for the MGM version of every musical style.
I’m doing a new musical on Broadway, which opens in October called ‘The Boy from Oz,’ where I play Peter Allen. For those of you who don’t know, he became first famous in America for marrying Liza Minelli.
I don’t like rock. Honestly, I like to listen to it, but it’s not for me. There’s a lot of musical genres that I find interesting, but they don’t suit me. It’s one thing to listen to different genres, but to perform a genre that isn’t yours is counterproductive.
It’s nice to stay up nights worrying about the material, and not about the investors who gave you $10 million to do your musical.
I have never been asked to be in a movie musical. Other than ‘Yentl,’ which I didn’t sing in.
Piano playing is a dying art. I love the fact that I can be one guy with one instrument evoking an emotional and musical experience.
It would be great to do theater one day, but I don’t think I’d do a musical.
That said, I’d love to do a musical, either in film or on stage.
The most consistent musical experience I had growing up was church music.
For me, the sound design and the musical score is a big part of what makes scary movies work.
I grew up listening to Steve Martin and Robin Williams, so I didn’t ever intend to be a musical comedian. I sort of stumbled into it.
My mother – who’s from Iowa – owns and runs her own day-care centre, while my father’s a developer. And my musical influences, I think, came from my father’s side of the family.
