Music Quotes

I don't dismiss the music that I was involved with, I don't think it was a joke, I don't think it was funny or a phase, I don't think it was just something I was doing back then, to me it was who I am. It connects all the way through. I don't distance myself from any of it.

It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the irony in which English people habitually address one another.

It's amazing to be nominated for the Brits' Critics' Choice Award 2016. It's such a significant award that highlights the importance of new music, so it's a genuine honour to have been nominated alongside some other incredible new acts from the U.K.

I had teachers in high school to point me in the direction of the University of Indiana School of Music, and after IU, I went on to study at the Academy of Arts in Philadelphia. I graduated in 2006.

Seriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time.

I never heard anything so brilliant in my life as I did that first time I heard Ornette. He played like some revolutionary angel. Soon, we were rehearsing in his place, music scattered everywhere, and he was telling me to play outside the chord changes, which was exactly what I had been wanting to do. Now I had permission.

But then I go through long periods where I don't listen to things, usually when I'm working. In between the records and in between the writing I suck up books and music and movies and anything I can find.

I haven't heard any music on the BBC World Service in a long time. Maybe I'm listening at the wrong times. But not one single piece of music.

I've always loved to prove people wrong. I want to be able to cross color lines, because in music, there really is no barrier.

I hope that I can make good music out of whatever genre I go into. Just to prove to myself that I can.