I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time.
Sometimes my boyfriend would write the lyrics and I would write the melody, and other times I would start from scratch. Or sometimes I would take a local poem and put that to music.
I could read music and sing all the right notes at the right time. And over time, I literally found my voice, found a way to make sound.
I've done a lot of performance practice, Baroque playing, and some of the joy and the challenge of it is figuring out what the composer intended... You have music of the 17th century - it's all whole notes and half notes. But inside of that, there ar...
There's a bit of a new guard of contemporary classical musicians in New York, and we play a lot of different kinds of music together. We do pop studio sessions, and we'll also play John Cage and more avant-garde work. We're developing a language of m...
I've spent a lot of time playing Bach partitas. One of my first jobs was to play for ballet and modern classes, so the music in 'Partita' is kind of like choreography for me.
I grew up listening to - it's kind of embarrassing - all classical music.
People ask me all the time which I would prefer doing more, but I honestly can't say. When I'm filming, I'm like, 'No, this is my favorite,' and when I'm writing music and recording and performing, it's like, 'This is definitely it.'
I started classical and operatic lessons when I was 8 and become an operatic singer and went to competition. I write my own music. A lot of the songs, growing up, I was into writing dark stories and poems, and one day I started putting melodies to th...
I'm always online looking for new music and things like that.
I was in every band class I could get in, like after school jazz band and marching band, and that's where I really learned to read music from elementary all the way through junior high and high school.
The Chili Peppers do a lot of improvising, but it's within the framework of song structures. The Meatbats is from a purely instrumental standpoint. But when you hear the term 'instrumental music' you think it's real serious stuff and everybody's play...
I just try to approach and serve the music in the way that I think is right for the band I'm in at the time.
I had always thought that I would do something that was connected to music as a career, or possibly Chinese, which was my major.
I wanted to play music. I didn't think about where it would go or what it would do.
I was obsessed with David Bowie - still am. He's a babe, a total babe. His music is killer; his visuals are beautiful.
I listen to the Mars Volta and Fiona Apple every day. I feel if you do write music, you write what you listen to, and you couldn't possibly write in another genre. So those are the two that I usually use.
New Orleans is a place where people are deliberately undereducated so that they can be a labour class - the economy there is tourism, and one of the only outlets that black males have traditionally been allowed is to play jazz music, y'know?
The music that I make, the younger musicians are referring to it as 'stretch' music.
Jazz is really 20th-century fusion music. You take West African harmony and rhythm, mix with European harmony, and boom!
I play music the way it was played in yesteryear.
