Quotes About Piano

I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made out of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do everything.

I don't really have loads of friends - three or four who are close. The thing that I love the most is playing with my band, and with everything else I feel kind of uncomfortable. I don't think I'm socially awkward. I just prefer being behind a piano.

The first thing I learned was the 'St Louis Blues' when I was eight. Both my grandmothers, my mother and uncle played the piano. This was post-war Britain, and they played boogie woogie and blues, which was the underground music of the time.

The piano is an instrument that can easily sound overly thick, and I love to think that I can work with textures - particularly the inner textures inside the melody or the bass line. There is an analogy there with painting; I love paintings where you see colour underneath the colour and, underneath that, more texture and shape.

If you think hard enough about it, Rowlf the dog playing the piano on 'The Muppet Show' - what kind of insanity was happening underneath the cameras to make that happen? His mouth is moving, and he's got two hands playing the piano. That's two people under there!

My father had left behind an old piano. My sister was already going to school, my mother was out working, and I stayed at home alone with my adorable grandmother who understood nothing I said. It was so boring that I stayed at the piano all day long, and that saved my life.

The piano is the X factor. People have a tough time following the structures when there's no piano there, spelling it out. It makes it more easily understood, particularly to people who don't know as much about music.

You'd always see a lady or a little girl sitting at a piano. I decided I wanted to play something more unexpected, so that's when I got interested in learning to play the guitar.

I used to go to Caerphilly with my brother Les, two years older than me, with my mother to see her sister, Gladys. When they wanted to talk we'd have to leave the room. She'd say to her husband Stan 'take them in the front room and play the piano.'

I've been working on something, just some jazz, relaxed stuff. It will be standard, just piano and voice. It started out as a fun project for me though, I'm still not sure about releasing it.

My great hero is Billie Holiday, and I've always wanted to do an album of standards with a piano-led quartet.

I was a halfway-decent-looking English boy who looked nice in a drawing-room standing by a piano.

In junior high, I sang in madrigals, men's' and women's' choir. I played piano too, but then I got out of it.

She had also a taste for music. Nestling upon a pile of scores, she would listen most attentively and with every mark of satisfaction to the singers who came to perform at the critic's piano. But high notes made her nervous, and she never failed to close the singer's mouth with her paw if the lady sang the high A. We used to try the experiment for the fun of the thing, and it never failed once. It was quite impossible to fool my dilettante cat on that note.

I wanted to love this piano. I wanted to invite music back into my life.

The effect is captivating as all of the tones mix, like a watercolor with hues swirled together, and lovely carrying notes long after the fingers are lifted from the keys.

Think of a full-size harp, the kind used in orchestras. Pivot it mentally from the vertical, as it normally stands, to the horizontal and put it in a box shaped to its frame. There you have the shape of the grand piano.

On a visit to the Steinway showroom in New York, I saw Henry Steinway, the last member of the family to be connected with the company, take out a felt-tip pen and sign the painted metal frame of a piano for an enthusiastic customer. It was like watching a baseball player sign a ball, or an author his book, and seemed in keeping with our age of celebrity.

Monk's reasons for dancing during a performance: "I get tired sitting down at the piano! That way I can dig the rhythm better.

My childhood neighbor played piano, and he told me we'd get all the girls if I learned how to play-and I was probably in eighth grade, going into high school, so I said, 'Sign me up.'

Once I understood Bach's music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world.

In Hell, whenever the demons announce they're going to treat everyone to a big-name Hollywood movie, don't get too excited because it's always The English Patient or, unfortunately, The Piano. It's never The Breakfast Club.

Music, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds. Under certain emotional circumstances I can stand the spasms of a rich violin, but the concert piano and all wind instruments bore me in small doses and flay me in larger ones.

I am a trained classical pianist. I can play all the masters. I can improvise on the piano, as well as play a variety of styles of music. Yet, I cannot build a piano. Is it necessary for me to know how to build a piano to be a good musician?