Jazz, isn't that just a series of mistakes diguised as musical composition?
For a long time in the 1970s, I was experimenting to build musical instruments and use them. I did a lot of ethnic music studies and other things, like electronic music. Making homemade musical instruments and performing was my major activity from the time.
There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition; nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attracted to repetition, even as adults; we want the stimulus and the reward again and again, and in music we get it. Perhaps, therefore, we should not be surprised, should not complain if the balance sometimes shifts too far and our musical sensitivity becomes a vulnerability.
I want to get a handle on the music. There's only so much you can do alone. I want everyone else there. I can't wait until we feel we've got it down and we can really figure out what it's all about! I can't wait to meet Harvey Keitel, too! I'm so used to working with musical theatre people. . . I'm really curious how he works. He's the only one that doesn't sing in the show - he acts and weaves himself through the show as the ring-master. I hope I learn something from him.
What I love about doing musical work is that it heightens the emotion.
Sometimes to get in the "musical mood," I'll just turn on music really loud, or go drive around and listen to music, or learn a song that I really like on guitar or piano. That gets me in the right frame of mind to proceed.
I think touring in America lives up to the myth, in all ways of what touring is. So many pretty cities, and it's pretty easy, compared to touring other places. I'm fascinated by America. Great crowds - people are very musical. I've been getting better throughout the tour in America, relating to people. At the start I was a bit stiff, and I'm starting to relax.
My earliest memories about music are connected with going to church and listening to organ music. I am not from a musical family, actually, and I remember my first musical fascination to be for organ music. I wanted to become an organist and not a pianist.
In my mid 30's, after a decade or so of giving full time to the music thing and finding myself with about $10 in the bank and no assets other than my musical equipment, I realized I needed to get serious about making a living.
Of course my books are translated into many languages. I have here, in my home, translations on my shelf of my books into forty-five different languages. Almost none of them I can read. I can read only the English editions. But, I know that a translation of a work of literature is like playing a violin concerto on the piano. You can do this. You can do this very successfully on one strict condition: never try to force the piano to produce the sounds of the violin. This will be grotesque. So, different musical instruments provide for different music.
I loved 'White Christmas' for the music aspect. I was into musical theater.
I can sing, but my voice is untrained. Id like to do a musical someday.
As for the symphonic activities. . . when I was a student at the Eastman School of Music, I became exposed to a lot more musical forms, elements, opportunities, and I fell in love with strings and their uses.
Someone like Mozart moves from Salzburg to Vienna, where all of the sudden he finds this musical city that is not only asking for music, it's demanding music of him.
Of course I'm ambitious. What's wrong with that? Otherwise you sleep all day.
I mean, it feels like a homecoming in a really wonderfully comfortable place to be - the same director, the same musical director, my same dressing room! [laughs] It's a great place to build something with freedom.
The script is the musical score, and everyone has to play off that score. Even I have to interpret it. The producers are there to eliminate obstacles to that interpretation.
Music is part of being human.
I really believe musical form will go on. There's got to be a way of making musical form in cinema live again.
I've dreamt of being in a movie musical for a long time. For some reason I never even thought 'Les Mis' would be possible.