The piano's world encompasses glass-nerved virtuos and stomping barrel-housers in fedoras; it is a world of pasture and storm, of perfumed smoke, of liquid mathematics. — Kenneth R. Miller
Why is a person who plays the piano called a pianist but a person who drives a racing car not called a racist? — Steven Wright
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
Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays. — George Balanchine
Steinway is the only piano on which the pianist can do everything he wants. And everything he dreams. — Vladimir Ashkenazy
Played percussively, the piano is a bore. If I go to a concert and someone plays like that I have two choices: go home or go to sleep. The goal is to make the piano sing, sing, sing. — Vladimir Horowitz
I'm kind of a one-note at a time, one finger keyboard player. — Matt Sharp
To me, the piano in itself is an orchestra. — Cecil Taylor
The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air. — Kenneth Miller
The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air. — Kenneth R. Miller
The piano is an orchestra with 88...... things, you know — Vladimir Horowitz
Rugby players are either piano shifters or piano movers. Fortunately, I am one of those who can play a tune. — Pierre Danos
The piano keys are black and white but they sound like a million colors in your mind. — Maria Cristina Mena
Short Pianist Quotes
Even in winter it shall be green in my heart. — Frederic Chopin
Put all your soul into it, play the way you feel! — Frederic Chopin
Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano. — Frederic Chopin
Composing is like driving down a foggy road. — Benjamin Britten
I am God! I am nothing, I'm play, I am freedom, I am life. I am the boundary, I am the peak. — Alexander Scriabin
I don't believe in geniuses, I believe in hard work. — Michel Petrucciani
When you play, never mind who listens to you. — Robert Schumann
When you get to the top, don't forget to send the elevator down for the next guy. — Stan Kenton
I got the fingers of a pianist or somebody looking for something real small in a basket. — Theo Von
I'm a revolutionary, money means nothing to me. — Frederic Chopin
Pianist Image Quotes
The Pianist Quotes
It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you. — Frederic Chopin
I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach. — Glenn Gould
If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it. — Ignacy Jan Paderewski
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
The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes --ah, that is where the art resides. — Artur Schnabel
The mental imagery involved with pianistic tactilia is not related to the striking of individual keys but rather to the rites of passage between notes. — Glenn Gould
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
I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. — Oscar Peterson
I'm sorry that I did not become the world's first black classic pianist. I think I would have been happier. — Nina Simone
Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel. — Oscar Peterson
Classical Pianist Quotes
When I was studying... there weren't any black concert pianists. My choices were intuitive, and I had the technique to do it. People have heard my music and heard the classic in it, so I have become known as a black classical pianist. — Nina Simone
The people who raised me musically are my mother, who is a classically trained pianist, and my stepfather. — Jeff Buckley
Classical pianist Awadagin Pratt. I first heard this eccentric and introverted performer when I was living in the Midwest. He was playing Brahms ballades - haunting. — Daniel Breaker
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
I played piano for a lot of my childhood and stupidly quit. I wish I hadn't - I could have been a great classical pianist! — Frankie Cosmos
My mother was a classical pianist and my stepfather was an industrialist who was passionate about composing contemporary music. — Carla Bruni
My father was a classical pianist, and my mother was a singer of just about everything. — Carly Simon
Today, Lan Lan is one of my favourite classical pianists.... Years ago I had a great admiration for Arthur Rubinstein but I have no doubt that Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin were also fantastic piano players - though there is no way to listen to them when they were performing. — Richard Clayderman
In fact although I have studied in a Conservatory the classical piano, I do not consider myself a classical pianist. — Richard Clayderman
By the time I was eight I was taking classical piano lessons and I wanted to be a concert pianist. But that didn't work out. I graduated from high school and my formal education ended. — Nina Simone
Playing Piano Quotes
My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. To tell the truth, there's hardly a difference. — Harry S. Truman
Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music. — Sergei Rachmaninoff
A smart girl is one who knows how to play tennis, golf, piano -- and dumb. — Marilyn Monroe
Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it. — Tom Lehrer
I play drums, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, french horn, piano. — Norman Wisdom
Piano playing consists of common sense, heart and technical resources. All three should be equally developed. Without common sense you are a fiasco, without technique an amateur, without heart a machine. The profession does have its hazards. — Vladimir Horowitz
When she started to play, Steinway came down personally and rubbed his name off the piano. — Bob Hope
I bought a piano once because I had the dream of playing As Time Goes By as some girl's leaning on it drinking a martini. Great image. But none of it worked out. I can't even play Chopsticks. But I've got a nice piano at my house! — George Clooney
If you want to play piano, you just gotta love piano, and I loved the way that music sounded from the beginning. Always did - everything about an instrument I loved. — Future
I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right. — Duke Ellington
When I’m creating at the piano, I tend to feel happy; but - the eternal dilemma - how can we be happy amid the unhappiness of others? I'd do everything I could to give everyone a moment of happiness. That's what's at the heart of my music. — Nino Rota
I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o'clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous. — Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Every day I lugged my backpack through the halls, waiting for the final bell. Then I'd race home and hole up in my room, playing the drums and the piano, composing music. — Josh Groban
I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began to compose music, and at the most advanced level. I had never studied such things as harmony. — Gyorgy Legeti
Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading. — Igor Stravinsky
I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began to compose music, and at the most advanced level. I had never studied such things as harmony. — Gyorgy Ligeti
On television I feel like a man playing piano in a brothel; every now and again he solaces himself by playing 'Abide with Me' in the hope of edifying both the clients and the inmates — Malcolm Muggeridge
Touch me ‘til my ribs become piano keys, ‘til there is sheet music scrolled across the inside of my lungs. — Andrea Gibson
The music is within your heart, your soul, your spirit, and this is all I did when I sat at piano. I just go within. — Alice Coltrane
Piano Keys Quotes
Life's piano can only produce melodies of brotherhood (and sisterhood) when it is recognized that the black keys are as basic, necessary and beautiful as the white keys. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
I hope to refine music, study it, try to find some area that I can unlock. I don't quite know how to explain it but it's there. These can't be the only notes in the world, there's got to be other notes some place, in some dimension, between the cracks on the piano keys. — Marvin Gaye
I sat down at the piano and my hands began to browse over the keys. Thensomething happened. I felt as though I could reach out and touch God. I foundmyself playing a melody, one I'd never heard or played before, and words came intomy head - they just seemed to fall into place. — Thomas A. Dorsey
The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key. — Fyodor Dostoevsky
Outlaws, like lovers, poets, and tubercular composers who cough blood onto piano keys, do their finest work in the slippery rays of the moon. — Tom Robbins
Slap some keys on her and we'll have a piano. — Darryl F. Zanuck
The public is like a piano. You just have to know what keys to poke. — Al Capp
In general, therefore, color is a means of exerting a direct influence upon the soul. Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many strings. The artist is the hand that purposefully sets the soul vibrating by means of this or that key. — Wassily Kandinsky
Piano playing is more difficult than statesmanship. It is harder to awake emotions in ivory keys than it is in human beings. — Ignacy Jan Paderewski
I've never been in love. I've dreamt of it day and night, but my heart is like a fine piano no one can play because the key is lost. — Anton Chekhov
Piano Lesson Quotes
My son's taking drum lessons, and my daughter's taking piano lessons. One day they're going to start a band. — Chris Daughtry
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
My mother also had us take piano lessons, and this had a similar effect. I hated those lessons, but I now play regularly for pleasure and have even tried my hand at composing. — Robert B. Laughlin
However, I began composing as soon as I started taking piano lessons. — Gyorgy Legeti
Psychoanalyses is like music lessons, for 5 years you do not notice any progress and suddenly you can play the piano. — Woody Allen
I grew up painting and playing piano so when I was a little kid I thought I was going to be an artist or a painter but my mom had me taking piano lessons for about 10-12 years as a young kid. — Mike Shinoda
Some people do piano lessons after school; I do movies. — Elle Fanning
I was taking piano lessons with a very good piano instructor in Toronto, and I'm afraid due to my schedule and discipline, it kind of fell apart. One thing lead to another and I was unable to practice as much as I wanted to. — Geddy Lee
Everybody in our family studied a musical instrument. My father was really big on that. Somehow I only took a year or two of piano lessons and I convinced my father to let me take dancing lessons. — Madonna Ciccone
My goal was to play drums, but my father made me take piano lessons. He told me I needed to learn to read music first, so I took lessons for six years. I thank God that he made me take those lessons, because it taught me a tremendous amount. — Brian Austin Green
So much of what we do is ephemeral and quickly forgotten, even by ourselves, so it's gratifying to have something you have done linger in people's memories. — John Towner Williams
I don't think I'm even close to fulfilling my potential. And I think also that, unlike a pianist or a flutist, an actor has an instrument that is constantly changing. — Kerry Washington
I think all record companies should be run by a musician. Just as you wouldn't trust your health to an electrician. — Paul Bley
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. — Nina Simone
It is not a profession to be a pianist and musician. It is a philosophy, a conception of life that cannot be based on good intentions or natural talent. First and foremost there must be a spirit of sacrifice. — Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli
I really don't know whether any place contains more pianists than Paris, or whether you can find more asses and virtuosos anywhere. — Frederic Chopin
My father was a stone mason, and a talented amateur pianist and vocalist. — John E. Walker
The piano ain't got no wrong notes. — Thelonious Monk
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
Roaring like a tiger turns some children into pianists who debut at Carnegie Hall but only crushes others. Coddling gives some the excuse to fail and others the chance to succeed. — Ayelet Waldman
The less you want, the richer you are. The more you need in order to be happy, the more miserable you’ll be. — Yanni
I wanted to be a concert pianist at Carnegie Hall; that is what I wanted to do from really early on. I actually was the accompanist for a couple of the musicals I was in growing up. — Kirsten Nelson
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
Ask any great athlete or the concert pianist or the successful actor if they have arrived at the place where they need no further practice. They will tell you that the higher you climb in proficiency and public acceptance, the greater the need for practice. — Sayings
Sometimes pianists try to sound like singers: me personally, I try to sound like a Bösendorfer. — Placido Domingo
To play the piano is to consort with nature. Every mollusk, galaxy, vapor or viper as well the sweet incense of love's distraction, is within the hands and grasp of the pianist. — Russell Sherman
I was born in Memphis. There was music all around me, really deep and special music. I heard all these great masters at a young age.There was a great genius in my town, Phineas Newborn, who is one of the greatest pianists ever on the planet. He took me under his wings at about 9 and he put me on the right track. — Charles Lloyd
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
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of pianist quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about pianist to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of pianist quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
