Pianist Quotes - Page 9

• I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea.

  Oscar Peterson

  Music, Believe, Ideas

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• Just as the pianist practices the most complicated pieces to improve the technique of his fingers, so too a grandmaster must keep his vision in trim by daily analysis of positions with sharp possibilities, and this applies whether he prefers such positions in his play or not.

  Alexander Kotov

  Practice, Play, Training

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• Newspapers ascribe the word "climber" to any person who falls in the mountains or off a rock. To refer to anyone who falls in the mountains as... a climber... is as factual as to say that anyone who sits down at a piano is a pianist.

  Pat Ament

  Fall, Rocks, Climbing

  Pat Ament (1997). “How to be a master climber in six easy lessons”

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• Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano.

  Frederic Chopin

  Life, Music, Piano

  Frederic Chopin (2013). “Chopin's Letters”, p.149, Courier Corporation

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• When you play, never mind who listens to you.

  Robert Schumann

  Music, Play, Piano

  Robert Schumann (1860). “Advice to Young Musicians”, p.10

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• 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

  Soccer, Football, Running

  28 Copy quote

• 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

  Stars, Theatre, Rehearsal

  51 Copy quote

• I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. What I do, in my opinion, is by no means extraordinary.

  Billy Joel

  Mean, Singers, Opinion

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• I want to be a lawyer, a dancer, an actress, a mother, a wife, a childrens 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

  Mother, Teacher, Distance

  Rachel Corrie (2009). “Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie”, p.16, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert - in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again…no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

  Daniel Levitin

  Basketball, Player, Numbers

  "Outliers: The Story of Success". Book by Malcolm Gladwell, November 18, 2008.

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• The game of cricket existed long before I was born. It will be played centuries after my demise. During my career I was privileged to give the public my interpretation of its character in the same way that a pianist might interpret the works of Beethoven.

  Donald Bradman

  Sports, Character, Games

  78 Copy quote

• Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I'll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, 'I'd like to write about that.' Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

  Maya Angelou

  Running, Writing, Thinking

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