I did a concert... in September with the Berlin Philharmonic... They're great musicians, and there's always something to learn from them.

I think, first of all, you need to love what you're doing, and then this helps in the comedian for its part in everything-but the moment you enjoy what you're doing, you try to express yourself, to find your way, and every time is different, of course.

So I like to make music, and I like to share music. This is also a gift.

The first time I sang with David Daniels... I had never performed with a countertenor before. That first time was magic, it was so beautiful. And he's such a great artist.

I still love to walk in the mountains or be on the sea. I like to be in nature. Sometimes I bicycle. It's important to feel good with your body. The body is extremely important. If you feel good, you have more energy in your singing.

So you see, movies are really another dimension.

Arizona is gorgeous. The sunshine in Arizona is gorgeous red.

We consider Monteverdi the first composer of opera. There was someone before, but everything started with Monteverdi.

Well, what I tried to do is to just listen to my voice, because my voice is my boss. She decides.

It's nice to have a great female composer in the program and add her color.

The songs of Bizet are by a French peer of Rossini. When Rossini stopped composing, he was living in Paris. He also wrote some beautiful songs in French.

I am a person of the 18th century.

The voice is an instrument that you really must take time to develop. It's like a good red wine Give it time.

When you are accompanied by the instrument - on an instrument like the lute-the lute and voice - you have this sound, and you feel how the music can be so touching and yet so simple.

It's a dream come true, and with this music, with this Rossini, it's unbelievable how to express the joy and express the joy of the situation and the joy to play this music, to sing this music, it's really fantastic.

The voice will guide you-will tell you what to do. In order to do that, you must be quite sensitive with the instrument and accept this daily conversation with your voice.

I did a concert... in September with the Berlin Philharmonic... They're great musicians, and there's always something to learn from them.

I still the love classic period, but also the baroque period, and even 17th-Century music such as the music of Monteverdi. He's one of the greatest opera composers. He was the one who really started the opera.

Music is a way to dream together and go to another dimension.

Well, I don't think a specific role can destroy your voice. What can destroy your voice is when you... make an error. Everybody can make an error. But then you need to realize what is your way.

Actually, I feel music becoming more and more important. It's a big source of inspiration. With what's going on in the world, we feel almost desperate. Music also brings you peace.

When I had my first voice lesson I was 15 years old. And I had a really good teacher. This is what made all the difference. A good teacher will teach you the technique, but also how to listen to your voice.

People realize that Salieri is not the man we saw in the Amadeus movie. That man had no talent. It was a great movie, but the Salieri character was a big fiction.

The media can be a really strong vehicle.

The restaurants close here in Salzburg. They don't really have a nightlife in the winter time.

I went to the Conservatory of Music in school in Rome.

The goal is always to make a nice tableau painting with the voice. The more color I can find, the more shadow I can find - the goal is always to make more nuance and colors.

It's like when you want to make a house... the technique is very important.

I would still love to do more Handel. I think Handel was a fantastic composer. I did lots of Vivaldi, but it's also important to do the music of Handel, one of the greatest composers of the 18th century.

German is more familiar now since I live part of the year in Rome and part in the German part of Switzerland. But it's not difficult to sing in German; it's difficult to feel in German. This takes time. It's a culture.

It's such a joy to work with different ensembles and create a collaboration. Rehearsing and building a performance is very interesting for me.

That's Tommy, this great producer who comes in contact with people and must have a mental library of personnel who are great for this and great for that, and he brought this whole group of musicians to the project that I'd never worked with before.

Every musical movement that is big enough has to produce some good musicians who wouldn't have had the incentive to start playing without it.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

When we started making electronic music I imagined that the reaction we got from the rock musicians must have been similar to the one the beat groups got from people like my dad.

We were brash young fellows'. I was always hanging with the older crowd anyway. The musicians were the Hip Cats, and I was hanging with them anyway. I Just started out real early.

You can have all sorts of relationships, but there's something with musicians working together where you can have relationship that can just continue to grow in a beautiful way.

Most musicians count at the beginning, and never count and talk to their musicians after that. They only talk to them at the end of the song. But I would count with them and talk.

It's my fault in many cases because I don't initiate the contact to talk with a lot of other musicians.

Musician jokes are a kind of joke that usually have to do with how much money someone makes. Musicians are always starving, so they're really mean to each other about who makes what.

What 'jazz' means to me is the worst kind of working conditions, the worst in cultural prejudice. The term 'jazz' has come to mean the abuse and exploitation of black musicians.

We wanted to guide the musicians, so we could create our own sound. We would never let the band just go in and play the chord sheets. We were very focused on what we had in mind for these productions.

I don't take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.

I'm always going to get more of a charge playing Chicago than I will Duluth or some place like that. Just because of the history and the people there are way more knowledgeable than a lot of other cities. It's an amazing music scene with some great bands and great musicians.

Watch MTV and you can see what the music scene is like in England. The Spice Girls? Not a lot of creativity in the commercial area. There are still great musicians in England, but not a lot being heard that much.

Success breeds volume, and it's just amazing how many young writers, artists, and musicians there are in town.

At the art college in Edinburgh someone arranged for some London groups to come up and play. I was in a supporting band, with Bernie Green I think. Derek Bailey was one of the visiting musicians. He seemed to like my playing and asked me to come down to London.

Out of doing all that experimentation with sound I decided I wanted to do it with live musicians. To take repetition, take music fragments and make it live. Musicians would be able to play it and create this kind of abstract fabric of sound.