When you play a violin piece, you are a storyteller, and you're telling a story.
Joshua Bell
I want to do everything. That's my problem. Life is short, and I hate the idea of turning down anything. You never know what interesting experience might happen.
I hope I will always have the chance to play the violin.
We live in a very chaotic world that sometimes we - it just seems like a mess. One of the reasons why we listen to music, and to great classical music in particular, is that everything is in an order and in a place and has a beauty that you see in nature, that you see and that people look for when they look for God.
What drew me to the violin was mastering the instrument technically, which I'm continuing to do.
Over the years, I've collected a lot of musical friends.
Conducting is a strange thing to teach.
I love the outdoor festival feeling.
Beethoven's fourth and seventh symphonies have a certain amount in common. Well, of course they're both written by Beethoven, but besides that, I would say their overall effect and idea is to provide the listener with an incredible sense of joy.
I happen to love Saint-Saens in general. I think he's a brilliant composer and sometimes underrated in a way because people like to pass him off as fluffy and not being serious.
I always have loved the Stradivarius. My teacher, Josef Gingold, he had a Stradivarius. As a treat, he would put it under my chin and let me play a few notes, and I remember that feeling of the overtones, the complexity of the sound. It's like a great wine.
When I do things, like, with Josh Grobin, or he has so many fans, and I get people after my concerts, classical concerts, all the time coming back and saying, 'Never heard of you until I heard the song with Josh Grobin.' Then they're now classical music fans, which is something I think we need to reach a wider audience.
So much of performing is a mind game. You're memorizing thousands of notes, and if you start thinking about it in the wrong way, everything can blow up in your face.
I think, as an artist, it's very important to continue to be challenged and feel challenged all the time.
I approach everything as chamber music. Even with Beethoven symphonies, I lead from the violin and basically encourage the orchestra to think of it as a giant string quartet.
I've always been accused of moving around too much when I play concertos. Sometimes, conductors ask me which of us is leading.
I never had any real expectations about what sort of success I would have or all the publicity.
No one tells you what to do if you completely flop at the beginning of a performance.
Good conductors know when to let an orchestra lead itself. Ninety percent of what a conductor does comes in the rehearsal - the vision, the structure, the architecture.
Good conductors know when to push and when to lay back. I've known so many great conductors that I'm still doing what I can to learn the craft of this role.
It's interesting about classical music that the more you hear something, the more you get to know a piece, the better and better it gets, period, which is just an interesting thing on it.
Music is a continual learning process. One finds new insights all the time. For me, it began at a very early age; from the beginning, there was something besides the notes.
You're a constant student, as a musician.
When I was 12, that's when I went to college. All my friends were 20, 21, and I was 12. It didn't even occur to me that that was strange.
Although I hardly ever turn on the TV set unless it's football season, I do watch a lot of TV on my iPad - perfect for long airplane journeys.
You don't have to have lots of love affairs to know what love is.
I can't play on a full stomach, so I save my eating for after the concert.
I hate YouTube sometimes because people put up things of mine that were never meant for consumption and also because of some of the comments people write about my videos.
Over the years, I've seen how being a soloist and having a family can really work.
Playing the Beethoven symphonies, for example, is a consummate experience for a musician because Beethoven speaks so directly to who we are as people.
My whole life, I've been watching conductors. I was 7 the first time I played with a conductor. Seeing the ones that do it well, it's an amazing thing.
So much of performing is a mind game.
We like to categorize things into showy things and deep things, you know, and things that are high music - important music - and shallow music. And I think that's dangerous, because there's often a mix of both.
As far as I'm concerned, I want to do everything because life is short. So, when I did 'The Red Violin' film, I got to go to the Oscars, and I got to meet Samuel Jackson, and I got to do stuff that one wouldn't normally do in my world.
What drew me to the violin was mastering the instrument technically, which I'm continuing to do. You want to push boundaries, to not always be in your comfort zone. If you don't, you get stale. So you have to find areas of growth.
I love celebrating music in different and unique ways.
I know how to deal with jet lag, and I know just how much rest I need and when I need to take naps. When you walk on stage, you need your brain working at its highest and most fully-functioning, so it's not always easy, but I sort of figure it out.
I grew up in a musical environment. My parents played music and had it playing on the radio. They brought me to a concert at the age of 5, the same age I started violin lessons.
In those projects with Sting and Josh Groban and people like that, I see a very interesting effect: their fans coming to my classical concerts, people who've never been to a classical show at all.
I don't want to portray myself as a daredevil. I'm not at all.
I think it's really important to always kind of stretch your boundaries and your limits and get out of your comfort zone. And for me, that's very important.
I'm addicted to the adrenaline of performing, and I think when you're used to having that high, you look for it in other things.
There was a time, early on in my career, when it was very important for me to be liked by everyone. It meant that I was musically less honest with myself.
I kind of alternate between conducting and playing and kind of juggling those things, but I don't use a baton.
Someone who directs a film, they have to see the overall picture, and they have to get the best performances out of the actors.
After every concert, I greet young people in the lobbies. And I see a huge surge of young people playing music.
It's been very exciting for me to start directing and conducting, exploring the symphonic repertoire, which I've always loved.
I like trying things, I am kind of adventurous and I like thrill seeking.
Conducting is a strange thing to teach. There are very few great conducting teachers, and most great conductors don't teach. Look at Valery Gergiev - what he does is not teachable. A lot of it is on-the-job training, what works and what doesn't work.
I love the outdoor festival feeling. When I'm on stage, it's very gratifying to watch people on the lawns enjoying the music with a glass of wine.
