Best Pianist Quotes & Sayings

My father was a banker, but he was an independent spirit. He was a very good pianist and very much into music. — Yoko Ono

But most of the time, with a contented resignation that comes normally to a man only at the end of a long and busy life, he sat before the keyboard and filled the air with his beloved Bach.
Perhaps he was deceiving himself, perhaps this was some merciful trick of the mind but now it seemed to Jan that this what he had always wished to do. His secret ambition had at last dared to emerge into the full light of consciousness.
Jan had always been a good pianist, and now he was the finest in the world. — Arthur C. Clarke

In one dancing saloon I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice: 'Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.' — Oscar Wilde

Singers actually used to begin singing at a much younger age than they do now. I would say for me, I started late. But it's not unusual. I discovered I had a voice. I wanted to be a pianist when I was seven, and circumstances didn't allow that I studied it. — Dolora Zajick

I am the pianist of the duo, although Aleksey does pretty good ... you know we've written more and more stuff where he has to play the piano. But you know, to be very honest, I actually went into music because I wanted to be a composer and a conductor. And piano was just one of the ways to get into that. — Richard Hyung-ki Joo

I consider the first 20 performances just learning the piece. Think about it this way: If you think about a pianist who plays a Schubert sonata through his whole lifetime - if you listen to Rubenstein or Horowitz playing their repertoire later in their life, you understand the richness with which they play that music, and how differently they must have played it when they were younger. — Philip Glass

Mathematicians - for what they do - are really poorly rewarded. And it's a very competitive field, almost as bad as being a concert pianist. — Gian-Carlo Rota

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

It's a pity to shoot the pianist when the piano is out of tune. — Rene Coty

I sat on the piano bench next to my mother in church. Something happened before I set foot on this planet. I was crawling around inside of her. She was a church pianist. My dad was a brilliant singer. I was hearing it. — Al Jarreau

My whole family is in the arts some way or the other. My father was a cellist in a symphony outside Chicago that was a side-job, he was a scientist. My mother was a dancer in New York. She was next-door neighbors with Dorothy Loudon and they moved to New York together. Mom was a dancer in New York for several years before she got married. My sister was a classical pianist. And my brother was a partier. So it all just seemed to work. — Jason Graae

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

I have been like a mediocre concert pianist playing in front of a tone-deaf family, who applaud out of duty rather than for accomplishment. — Chris Murray

I have a good friend, Rudolf Serkin, the pianist, a very sensitive man. I was talking to him one day backstage after a concert and I told him that I thought he had played particularly sensitively that day. I said, "You know, many pianists are brilliant, they strike the keys so well, but somehow you are different." "Ah," he said, "I don't think you should ever strike a key. You should pull the keys with your fingers." — Andrew Wyeth

Duke Ellington is my choice for many reasons. Nobody has written so many great pieces of music, which are everlasting, and he has made them available to the world through his orchestrations of his work in a unique way. Lastly, he was himself a fine pianist. He covers the entire musical spectrum with his genius. — Marian McPartland

I'm by no means a pianist. I think that's safe to say, but the piano, for me, I would say it's the enabler. It gave me what I needed and gives me what I need in order to write a song. And I think playing or improvising on the piano is where I feel most liberated and sort of less conscious of all my insecurities or inadequacies. — Laura Mvula

Baton technique is to a conductor what fingers are to a pianist. — Igor Markevitch

There is a kind of classlessness in the theater. The rehearsal pianist, the head carpenter, the stage manager, the star of the show-all are family. — John Kander

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

A great pianist doesn't run around the piano or do push ups with his fingers. To be great, he plays the piano ... being a footballer is not about running, push-ups or physical work generally. The best way to be a great footballer is to play. — Jose Mourinho

Playing Rachmaninoff was like walking on a rope bridge across a gorge with dreamy skies above and a raging, muddy river below. — Ella Leya

I was for a minor amount of time but I was probably a better pianist at 15 than I am now. — Josh Silver

He was waiting for me at the best table in the room, toying with a glass of white wine and listening to the pianist who was playing a piece by Granados with velvet fingers. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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. — Carmen McRae

Secularity is a way of being dependent on the responses of our milieu. The secular or false self is the self which is fabricated, as Thomas Merton says, by social compulsions. 'Compulsive' is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to the need for ongoing and increasing affirmation. Who am I? I am the one who is liked, praised, admired, disliked, hated or despised. Whether I am a pianist, a businessman or a minister, what matters is how I am perceived by my world. If being busy is a good thing, then I must be busy. If having money is a sign of real freedom, then I must claim my money. If knowing many people proves my importance, I will have to make the necessary contacts. The compulsion manifests itself in the lurking fear of failure and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same - more work, more money, more friends. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

It just so happens that my oldest and best friend is Bob James, the Grammy-winning great jazz pianist! — Jack O'Brien

I recorded with Hank (Jones) a number of times, usually on dates where Milt was unavailable, and I thought he was the perfect pianist. He had a beautiful touch, knew all the best ways around the chord changes, and swung mightily. And he brought an air of cheerful competence to every date, making us all feel that it would be possible to make some very good music that day. — Bill Crow

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. — Eric Partridge

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. — Charles Kimbrough

I was the first person in my family born in the United States. My mom is from Croatia, and my dad is from Iran. They met at music school in Belgium. I grew up as a pianist. — Ottessa Moshfegh

I wanted to be a concert pianist at Carnegie Hall; that is what I wanted to do from really early on. — Kirsten Nelson

Inside the music like this, she understood many things. She understood that Simon was a disappointed man if he needed, at this age, to tell her he had pitied her for years. She understood that as he drove his car back down the coast toward Boston, toward his wife with whom he had raised three children, that something in him would be satisfied to have witnessed her the way he had tonight, and she understood that this form of comfort was true for many people, as it made Malcolm feel better to call Walter Dalton a pathetic fairy, but it was thin milk, this form of nourishment; it could not change that you had wanted to be a concert pianist and ended up a real estate lawyer, that you had married a woman and stayed married to her for thirty years, when she did not ever find you lovely in bed. — Elizabeth Strout

When a pianist sits down and does a virtuoso performance he is in a technical sense transmitting more information to a machine than any other human activity involving machinery allows. — Robert Moog

To wake up one day and be Steinway and Glen in One... Glen Steinway, Steinway Glen, all for Bach. — Thomas Bernhard

My mom's a concert pianist, so she started teaching me when I was around seven. When I was eight, I started writing my own songs, and kinda started putting piano and singing together. But I'm trained classically, which is a big influence on me, I think. — Birdy

I'm a concert pianist, that's a pretentious way of saying I'm unemployed at the moment. — Oscar Levant

Shook is the musical universe I created. I come from a classical and jazz background and my father is a jazz pianist, so my world bears largely the marks of this influence. As a sort of gateway, I started composing my own music on the computer at the age of 13. Before Shook, I had not yet discovered the kind of music I wanted to dedicate myself to, so I did a little of everything. — Shook

There's a difference between doing something and being something, but they merge into each other. I mean, you play the piano a bit, and then more and more, and at some point you become a pianist. That's who you are. — Nicci French

I practiced writing in every possible way that I could. I wrote a pastiche of other people. Just as a pianist runs his scales for ten years before he gives his concert: because when he gives that concert, he can't be thinking of his fingering or of his hands, he has to be thinking of his interpretation. He's thinking of what he's trying to communicate. — Katherine Anne Porter

I wanted to be a veterinarian until I saw a video of a vet performing surgery on a dog. Then I decided I wanted to be a pianist. — Amy Lee

When I do operas, I'm not really singing very classically. I have a classical background as far as being a pianist and an oboist, but my voice isn't really classical in the operatic sense. But I certainly have a classical sensibility, so I'm comfortable being in that world. — Jason Graae

One may be an excellent pianist, mathematician, gardener, or scientist and still be cranky and jealous, but in the West one can be considered a great moralist and yet not live by one's moral principles. We must simply recall here the Buddhist requirement that a person and his or her teachings be compatible. Ethics is not like any ordinary science. It must arise from the deepest understanding of human qualities, and such understanding comes only when one undertakes the journey of discovery personally. An ethic that is built exclusively on intellectual ideas and that is not buttressed at every point by virtue, genuine wisdom, and compassion has no solid foundation. — Matthieu Ricard

What I would really like to have been, given a perfect world, is a jazz pianist. I mean jazz. I don't mean rock and roll. I mean the never-the-same-twice music the American black people gave the world. — Kurt Vonnegut

Horror would not annoy a soldier any more than the sight of a hammer annoys a carpenter. It is sentimental to pretend that horror is not the tool of the soldier, just as the hammer is the tool of the carpenter. We live off death and the threat of death and we must take it calmly and use it well ... Eventually I came to enjoy killing, as a pianist enjoys the Czerny which keeps his fingers limber for the Beethoven. — Irwin Shaw

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. — Pharoah Sanders

Jazz is a constant theme in my life. My father is a jazz pianist, and from an early age I have been surrounded by it. — Nat Wolff

That Raymond was something," Nestor said. "Very talented."
"Perhaps not the best pianist." Bocha grimaced apologetically, as if compelled to put that evaluation on the record.
"He used to tell me he was basically faking it on the piano," Pescatore said. "He said he played just well enough to get into trouble. — Sebastian Rotella

These hands are steady enough, but they are large. Had he been a proper pianist - he's dabbled inexpertly - his ten-note span might be of use. — Ian McEwan