My father is a violinist and my mother is a pianist, so I've been hearing music all my life. I started playing at three and had my first music teacher at five.
From early on there were two things that filled my life - music and storytelling, both of them provoked by my father. He was a jazz pianist and also a very good storyteller, an avid reader. He passed both those interests on to me.
I find that in California I can't find guys that have enough energy. They play a little bit and that's about it. They play less. If I start a tune and then the pianist has to solo, I am looking to everybody to get to a certain climate and then I come back in while the energy is up high. Somehow that doesn't happen.
Then, for a hot three or four weeks I wanted to be a concert pianist.
It's a pity to shoot the pianist when the piano is out of tune.
When we are very young, we tend to regard the ability to use a colon much as a budding pianist regards the ability to play with crossed hands: many of us, when we are older, regard it as a proof of literary skill, maturity, even of sophistication; and many; whether young, not so young, or old, employ it gauchely, haphazardly, or at best inconsistently.
'The Pianist' is a movie I could watch over and over again.
I have believed for many years that Oscar Peterson is not only the greatest pianist in jazz today, but the greatest it has ever known.
Even if you are a pianist, your concerto repertoire is very limited compared to what your chamber repertoire would be if you were a chamber music pianist.
Oscar Peterson is my favorite all-around pianist. There are pianists I like because of one thing and pianists I like because of another. But overall, I like Oscar Peterson best.
I couldn't say I ever dreamt of becoming a composer, a pianist, or anything else for that matter. I have the kind of brain where nothing is set in stone.
I wanted to be a pianist but it just wasn't my thing. I guess I wanted to stand up rather than sit down.
Any pianist and singersongwriter would say "Carnegie Hall. " It's such a legendary place. I'd love to play at Carnegie Hall. That's definitely dream of mine.
I started off as a studio pianist in Hollywood.
You cannot play the piano by telling a pianist what to do, go a little more to the left or to the right. And the same is for the computer, really. You have to play yourself to get the most out of it.
Sometimes I think, not so much am I a pianist, but a vampire. All my life I have lived off the blood of Chopin.
Nina Simone was a gifted and prolific singer, songwriter and pianist who became a powerful presence in the civil rights movement and paid a professional price for it. Behind the scenes, she struggled in a fractious, sometimes violent relationship with her husband and manager and with mental health issues that strained other relationships, including with her only daughter.
I come from a wonderful family. My mother was a pianist and my father was a salesman. They were very middle-class, very middle-Western.
Ewan McGregor is a very genial and entertaining man, and Pierce Brosnan is possibly the nicest man in the world. Actually, it was quite a genial set The Ghost Writer, but the weather and the colors and the actual surroundings were oppressive. But it was a created atmosphere. What was so striking is that Roman Polanski had his crew from The Pianist, and we were shooting in Berlin, so there were German and Polish and French people, and I was just sort of enjoying being in this mix of people, all kind of rubbing along together. That felt good.
If you want to become a concert pianist, do it every day. You want to be a writer, do it every day. You want to become depressed, think depressing thoughts every day. You want to become an optimist, think a cheerful thought every day. Do it every day.
