Pianist Singer Quotes

Arin. I've wanted to do this for a long time." Her words silenced him, steadied him. Anticipation lifted within her like the fragrance of a garden under the rain. She sat at the piano, touching the keys. "Ready?" He smiled. "Play.

I had a dream about you. We were in a band. I was the lead singer, guitar player, saxophonist, harpist, violinist, bassist, cellist, harmonica player, pianist, and drummer. Oh, and I played the trumpet. And you, you had the important role—you played air guitar. I feel this dream accurately reflects me as an unselfish person, willing to stand in the shade so someone else might enjoy the spotlight and get all the glory.

I’m the lady by day, and I’m Gaga by night. And I’m always going to be that way, because it’s a testament to your discipline as a musician. I do like to drink, I like to get crazy, I like to go out with my friends, and I like to sing rock and roll. I used to go-go dance! And I like to be inspired by young artists, people like Millie who are outrageously hard, disciplined individuals. But at the end of the day I’m a classically trained pianist and I’m a singer, and that’s what allows the girl that goes out at night to also go on stage with Tony Bennett at Lincoln Center. Because I know how to do it.

I'm not really on a mission to tell anybody anything. I'd rather be figured out.

Our country has produced exceptional men and women: two Nobel laureates—Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral—the singers/composers Víctor Jara and Violeta Parra, the pianist Claudio Arrau, the painter Roberto Matta, and the novelist José Donoso, to mention a few who come to mind.

Without a sense of disjunction, the person will become at once tender and firm, flexible and strong, ambiguous and precise, focused in thinking and diffused in awareness, nurturing and guiding, giving and receiving. It will be like listening to a duet skillfully played by a pianist and a violinist, when one does not hear the two separate instruments so much as the harmonious interplay between them. Androgyny is to be experienced as a conversation where every sentence builds on the totality of what has gone before, and not as a succession of alternating brief speeches. In an androgynous interaction, an individual knows the simultaneous working of that intuitive aspect by which he is able to encompass wholes, with the sensate aspect wherein each minute element of a situation is seen and felt in its relationship to the totality.

Who’s Fats Waller?” “Oh, you child! A large, brilliant pianist, songwriter, and singer of the 1920s and ’30s.

I have found that my tiny church, St. Andrew Presbyterian, has given me a shape to work against--a darning egg--for the last thirty years, what with all these holes. We have a choir of eight people who open their mouths, and a huge sound comes out, a mix of joy, pain, faith and conversational exposition. Spirit rises and falls in the voices, the choir's and ours. The singing is full-throated and clear, like the sound your finger makes when you run it around the rim of a crystal glass. It is like African singing where people call from various spots and create one sound. Twenty minutes after the first cave children started kicking around the first improvised balls, people started singing. Half an hour later, they found harmonies. Even with a couple of exceptional singers in the choir, you hear a solid spirit of song, rather than how individuals personally embellish it. The rising and falling is like all of us leaning forward together, then leaning backward on our heels, then coming forward together again. Spirit flows, and the sounds keep stirring that spirit, as the breezes from the high open windows above us keep stirring the air. Sometimes the pianist hits a few false notes, or the soloist warbles, and some of us sing along enthusiastically in the wrong key and the old people's voices dim. But we all keep singing, a mix of magnificence and plainsong that is beautiful, and the hymn plays on.

In normal life, when you’re accompanying someone, you’re signing on to another person’s plan. We’re most familiar with the concept of accompaniment in the world of music. The pianist accompanies the singer. They are partners, making something together, but the accompanist is in the supportive role, subtly working to embellish the beauty of the song and help the singer shine. The accompanist is sensitive to what the singer is doing, begins to get a feel for the experience she is trying to create.

you’re signing on to another person’s plan. We’re most familiar with the concept of accompaniment in the world of music. The pianist accompanies the singer. They are partners, making something together, but the accompanist is in the supportive role, subtly working to embellish the beauty of the song and help the singer shine. The accompanist is sensitive to what the singer is doing, begins to get a feel for the experience she is trying to create. Accompaniment is a humble way of being a helpful part of another’s journey, as they go about making their own kind of music. The accompanist is not controlling the journey, but neither is she a passive bystander

Trained as a classical pianist, she was often called a jazz singer, but it was a label she deeply resented, seeing in it only a racial classification. She grudgingly accepted the popular nickname “the High Priestess of Soul” but gave it little significance. If anything, she claimed, she was a folk singer, and her dazzling, unpredictable repertoire—Israeli folk tunes, compositions by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, songs by the Bee Gees and Leonard Cohen and George Harrison, traditional ballads, jazz standards, spirituals, children’s songs—is perhaps unmatched in its range.

Traditional statements extol singing, dancing, and playing musical instruments. Pianist, singer-songwriter, and composer Billy Joel said music is an ‘explosive expression of humanity.’ Music soothes the agitations of the soul; it wipes away sorrows, and allows people to escape from themselves. Milan Kundera in his 1984 novel ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being,’ noted that music is a powerful liberating force:’ it liberated him from loneliness, introversion, the dust of the library; it opened the door of his body and allowed his soul to step out into the world and make friends.’ When the world proves too harsh for people music becomes their refuge, they turn their backs to sadness and loneliness, and seek solitude in the space of music.

You do understand what I mean!” he exclaimed, pleased to see Maude responding to his song. “I chose Nina Simone to show you something else. Just like you, Nina Simone had a classical background. When she was younger, she wanted to become a concert pianist. Her skill was beyond measure and she used it in a wide repertoire of jazz, blues, and R&B songs. And I think you can do the same. Music knows no limits and I truly understand why James insisted on signing you, Maude.” Maude remained silent, still thinking about his rendition of Nina Simone. “All you have to do is dig deeper. Try finding some suffering in you. Don’t sing the Cenerentola with a smile. Although you look like a girl who’s had it all. You know, the nice girl from the North of France, who grew up in a quiet, small town with her loving mom and dad and brothers and sisters, always top of her class, quick-tempered when things didn’t go her way. A bit spoiled, I guess. You have to put all that—” “Spoiled?” Maude blurted in utter disbelief, the word echoing through her mind. Of all the things he could’ve said about her, spoiled was the last word that could have appeared remotely appropriate to describe her. As for suffering, she’d had plenty of that, too, which is why she didn’t want to think about it. Not while she was so happy in New York and Carvin and the Ruchets were the last thing she wanted in her head. She painfully pushed the Ruchets away from her mind and turned to Matt, eyes flaring up again. “You know nothing about me, Matt,” she said, her voice quivering with emotion. “And you obviously know nothing about suffering, or you wouldn’t idealize it the way that you do. You see it as a romantic notion that seemingly gives depth to songwriting. And it does. Not because the singers actually thought of woe in a purely aesthetic way, but because that’s how they actually lived. You will never understand that,” she finished, trembling from head to toe. And with that, she grabbed her bag, coat, gloves, scarf, and stormed out of Matt’s Creation Room, slamming the door behind her.

It definitely helps to have a darning egg as you go through life. Trust me on this. I have found that my tiny church, St. Andrew Presbyterian, has given me a shape to work against—a darning egg—for the last thirty years, what with all these holes. We have a choir of eight people who open their mouths, and a huge sound comes out, a mix of joy, pain, faith and conversational exposition. Spirit rises and falls in the voices, the choir’s and ours. The singing is full-throated and clear, like the sound your finger makes when you run it around the rim of a crystal glass. It is like African singing where people call from various spots and create one sound. Twenty minutes after the first cave children started kicking around the first improvised balls, people started singing. Half an hour later, they found harmonies. Even with a couple of exceptional singers in the choir, you hear a solid spirit of song, rather than how individuals personally embellish it. The rising and falling is like all of us leaning forward together, then leaning backward on our heels, then coming forward together again. Spirit flows, and the sounds keep stirring that spirit, as the breezes from the high open windows above us keep stirring the air. Sometimes the pianist hits a few false notes, or the soloist warbles, and some of us sing along enthusiastically in the wrong key and the old people’s voices dim. But we all keep singing, a mix of magnificence and plainsong that is beautiful, and the hymn plays on.