Musicianship Quotes

The music that is played on the radio all the time or written about in magazines has nothing to do with musicianship. (Dweezil Zappa)

Rufus Wainwright has as true a voice as you can hear and as sweet and acute a sensibility as you can imagine. His musicianship combined with his poetic, intelligent and humane outlook on life make for one of the great performers of our day. I adore his singing, his song-writing, everything about him...

Rufus Wainwright

From New Orleans and the back roads of the Mississippi Delta to Harlem and Chicago, black musicians set enduring and distinctive standards for American creativity. The blues of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, the gospel of Mahalia Jackson, the jazz of Duke Ellington, and the soul of Marvin Gaye claim fans of all ages from around the world. The trumpeting genius of Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie illustrate the exceptional musicianship so prominent in various genres of African-American music.

George W. Bush

For almost a century, Jascha Heifetz was the performer all others wished to emulate, a genius whose technique and musicianship earned him accolades as "the perfect violinist."

Jascha Heifetz

He [Gilels] played in an easy, natural manner, with strong but unassuming musicianship. His technique was brilliant; years later Neuhaus, still astonished, was to recall Gilels's incredible octaves in Liszt's Spanish Rhapsody. Yet Gilels was never looked upon as a mere virtuoso. As a matter of fact, his programs did not often include music pour epater le bourgeois. He played a stedy diet of Beethoven (the Hammerklavier was a work that strongly engaged his last years), Schubert, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms. In many respects, the great virtuoso who put his authoritative stamp on whatever he played was, at the same time, a thinking man's pianist.

Emil Gilels

We didn't know what kind of music we'd make, we didn't know if it would be any good, but we hoped we'd have fun. He brings so much musical knowledge, amazing musicianship, melody and singing power from a different culture.

A. R. Rahman

The improvisational nature of jazz musicianship is such that a truly competent performer must be prepared to function as an on-the-spot composer who is expected to contribute to the orchestration in progress, not simply to execute the score as it is written and rehearsed.

Albert Murray

I have such happy memories of performing in a choir and I don't think I'd have got where I am today without all that experience. So my advice to young singers is to either join your school or church's choir or find one in your local area. Choral music at any level teaches you so much about musicianship and blending your voice.

Katherine Jenkins

We wanted to make sure that the film covered the main issues of his life. Musicianship, appearance.

Martin Bashir

I don't think there's anything wrong with not knowing how to play an instrument, but the rise of the non-musical producer has done away with musicianship and focused attention purely on the song's hook.

Moby

I feel like I'm waving the flag for musicianship, trying to bring back bands that can play. (Jonathan Davis)

Our idea is simply to play the songs and to emphasize our musicianship.

Krist Novoselic

I watched him at rehearsals and admired the way he conducted. Every corrective remark he made was exact: his ears and his musicianship were impregnable.

Richard Strauss

When H. L. Mencken unpacks his idiomatic brasses, tunes up his verbal strings, and gets in readiness his phrasal wood winds to orchestrate a fugue in damnation or in praise of man, god or book, his all too meagre audience cancels all other engagements to be on hand at the initial presentation. The result, that audience knows, will be an experience of pure enjoyment. His musicianship is unfailing. His program is unsatisfactory only in its impermanence. Though the theme he proposes is invariably Mencken - Mencken apropos of this or that - he gives it infinite and intricate variations.

Burton Rascoe