Pianist Quotes

In jazz, you listen to what the bass player is doing and what the drummer is doing, what the pianist and the guitarist is doing, and then you play something that compliments that, so you are thinking simultaneously and thinking ahead. (David Amram)

I was going to be a concert pianist, and when I was in high school, my parents were scared to death that I would focus too much on that too soon. And that I'd end up in some sort of dead end, and not fulfilling whatever potential they thought I had.

David Hyde Pierce

My mother adores singing and plays piano. My uncle was a phenomenal pianist. My brother John is a double bassist. I used to play the piano, badly, and cello. My brother Peter played violin.

Fiona Shaw

I don't regard myself as a great classical or jazz pianist. I like country music, but I'm not a great player. I just like music. Drums 'n' bass is pretty exciting and I'd love to explore it.

Keith Emerson

Opinion in all parts of the world would agree that Rachmaninoff is the most complete of living masters of the instrument; his technique is comprehensive, and he is, of course, musical to his bone's marrow. Most important of all, he is a composer, and for this reason he is able to approach a work as none of his pianist contemporaries can approach one – that is, from the inside, as an organic and felt creative process.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

I ... started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that's just the way it came out.

Nat King Cole

It seems that a lot of people, who haven't known of me as a pianist, think I've just started off as a comedian. And so for them the piano was something extra. But, of course, playing the piano was something that came before all of what's happened now.

Dudley Moore

I was like a well trained pianist who knows which note to hit, but can't make the music his own.

David Benioff

I want to be a lawyer, a dancer, an actress, a mother, a wife, a children's author, a distance runner, a poet, a pianist, a pet store owner, an astronaut, an environmental and humanitarian activist, a psychiatrist, a ballet teacher, and the first woman president.

Rachel Corrie

I decided during my teens that I wasn't going to have the life of a concert pianist, much to the chagrin of a lot of people who had put a lot of money into me!

Cy Coleman

I took some lessons as a kid but trained myself by ear. I did it the way jazz musicians used to learn years ago, which is to play records and slow them down to figure out the notes. At first I tried to imitate Red Garland, who was my favorite jazz pianist. (Donald Fagen)

Then, for a hot three or four weeks I wanted to be a concert pianist.

Frank Langella

My father was a stone mason, and a talented amateur pianist and vocalist.

John E. Walker

At the age of 16, something happened with my finger and the doctor told me, you never can be a organist or pianist, so think about what you do with music.

Kurt Masur

I'm basically a cocktail jazz kind of pianist. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a very good keyboard player. People think I think I'm good. I think I'm a very poor piano player.

Ray Manzarek

I started off as a studio pianist in Hollywood.

Skitch Henderson

I wanted to be a pianist but it just wasn't my thing. I guess I wanted to stand up rather than sit down.

Steve Lacy

But my mom was a pianist, and she taught piano out of her house. I was just so excited, being a little kid and having all these other kids come to my house twice a week. I thought it was a big party.

Vanessa Carlton

Rose water and raw spirit...weird amalgam of the bearded star gazer and the red haired pianist pounding away at her keyboard.

Amrita Sher-Gil

My first concert - apart from Beethoven at School and Erik Satie at the opening of my exhibition in Kleve in 1960 - was at the gallery Parnass in Wuppertal in 1963. Dressed like a regular pianist in dark grey flannel, black tie and no hat, I played the piano all over – not just the keys – with many pairs of old shoes until it disintegrated. My intention was neither destructive nor nihilistic. 'Heal like with like' – similia similibus curantur – in the homeopathic sense. The main intention was to indicate a new beginning.... or simply a revolutionary act. This was my first public Fluxus appearance.

Joseph Beuys

For me, one of the most empowering outcomes of my year of climbing has been the new narrative I can tell about myself. I am no longer "Adrianne: scholar, book lover, pianist, and Wikipedian”. I am now "Adrianne: scholar, book lover, pianist, Wikipedian, and rock climber”. (Adrianne Wadewitz)

My father was a classical pianist, and my mother was a singer of just about everything.

Carly Simon

I liked him [Rubinstein] as a pianist. He was a good musician and had a fantastic repertoire. He never had a great technique, but certain things he played well. I heard him play some of the Chopin etudes, the easier ones with great panache and I told him I had never heard them played better. He said, "Do you mean it?"

Arthur Rubinstein

Just meeting Rubinstein was a thrill for any pianist. He was a real link to tradition in western piano music. He was a friend of Rachmaninoff and he knew Debussy. The man was an inspiration to three generations of pianists.

Arthur Rubinstein

Rubinstein was a marvelous pianist, but entirely different than Horowitz. Rubinstein needed a piano where he would feel some resistance in the action, and which had a much warmer or broader sound, or a deeper, darker sound. A Horowitz piano is much more focused; the sound is much more brilliant.

Arthur Rubinstein

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