Hamburgers are my favorite thing to eat, period.
— Joshua Bell
I kind of alternate between conducting and playing and kind of juggling those things, but I don't use a baton.
My father was - actually was an Episcopal priest as a young man. Became a psychotherapist, a psychologist. My mother is Jewish, so I grew up in a mixed background. But the common denominator was certainly music, and that was sort of emphasized in my household as music being sort of the spiritual force.
Everyone's definition of what God means can vary. But music is something that really takes you to that - 'sublime' is a great word. That thing that is greater than we are. The beauty, the magic of the universe.
When Beethoven's Seventh Symphony was premiered, after the second movement, they clapped so much that they had the repeat the second movement and do it again.
People wrote the most beautiful things during the ugliest times.
Stradivarius, in particular, was the most amazing craftsman and one of the great artists and scientists that ever lived because he figured out something with the sound and the science of acoustics that we still don't understand it completely.
It's endless, the amount of things that music touches on that can help kids grow that are very, very practical.
Art and music is part of what it means to be a human being. And if you're neglecting that, you're basically ignoring a huge side of the brain and a huge side of what it means to be human.
Being a director or a conductor is a balance of many things. And to do it right is a very difficult tightrope to walk. I've come to the conclusion that there's really no way to be one hundred percent popular as conductor.
Obviously, I want it to be legally downloaded, and I myself have spent a fortune on iTunes because, for me, that's the easiest way to get music.
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.
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.
Beethoven's symphonies are not 'relaxing.' They are the most exciting things that have ever been created by a human being.
I like trying things, I am kind of adventurous and I like thrill seeking.
The best way to refine an interpretation is by getting out and performing.
What drew me to the violin was mastering the instrument technically, which I'm continuing to do.
I can't play on a full stomach, so I save my eating for after the concert.
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.
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.
After every concert, I greet young people in the lobbies. And I see a huge surge of young people playing music.
I think - I'm always interested in reaching people in different ways, not by - not by just standing on a - randomly on a subway platform.
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.
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.
Music teaches people to work together, which is maybe one of the most important skills.
The orchestra confides in me about their music director or their conductor, and I've never seen a conductor that's been liked by everyone.
I'm not a businessman, so I don't know how to solve the problems of the recording industry.
I'm happy if my music is being downloaded, whether it's legally or illegally.
Anyone who knows classical music and loves classical music has heard the Beethoven Seventh hundreds of times probably in their life.
I think, as an artist, it's very important to continue to be challenged and feel challenged all the time.
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.
I don't want to portray myself as a daredevil. I'm not at all.
I hope I will always have the chance to play the violin.
Conducting is a strange thing to teach.
The one thing in my contract that they have backstage for me is bananas. And usually my assistant will go and get me chicken broth.
If I read every comment on my YouTube videos, I'd go crazy with people that are saying negative things.
For me, music has been, in a sense, my religion, and it is what brings me closest to God or truth or whatever you want to call it.
When I hear people clapping at the wrong times, I think that's great. We have got a listener that's not used to going to - we have got a new listener.
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.
The beauty of a Stradivarius is that you can play in Carnegie Hall without any amplification, and it has this - the sound has, inside it, has something that projects, and it has multifaceted sound, something that kind of gets lost when you use amplification anyway.
For me, I'm sort of a wanna-be composer, and I love being involved with the arrangements.
I have visited schools that have music programs and those that don't. I see the way the kids act with each other.
Someone who directs a film, they have to see the overall picture, and they have to get the best performances out of the actors.
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.
You're really looking for the truth of what the piece is about. And that's going to be different for different people.
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'm having a blast being the music director at the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. It certainly is challenging for me, but I love challenges.
I like blackjack. I like the psychology of poker.
You don't have to have lots of love affairs to know what love is.
I never had any real expectations about what sort of success I would have or all the publicity.
