I listen to everything from Ravel to the Bee Gees.

On my mental iPod, I always have Stravinsky and Ravel.

My father had a varied ear, from Hank Williams to Ravel.

Why become a second-rate Ravel when you're already a first-rate Gershwin?

Whenever I ravel I seek the benefits of this great profession of chiropractic

I've learned a lot from the masters of orchestration, like Ravel and Stravinsky.

You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.

To this day, I still travel with scores. Every time I'm on a plane - it could be Stravinsky or Mozart or Ravel.

If you could just ravel out into time. That would be nice. It would be nice if you could just ravel out into time

He comes in on the beat and plays on top of the beat. I think when Prince makes love, he hears drums instead of Ravel.

I like classical music. I especially like the French composers: Ravel in particular. Debussy. That's so soothing in a nervous world.

To George Gershwin, on refusinghim as a pupil: You would only lose the spontaneous quality of your melody, and end by writing bad Ravel.

I toyed with the idea of playing Ravel's 'Pavane pour une infante defunte' but I couldn't remember if it's a tune or Latin prescription for piles.

And, you know, I think the original recording of Ravel's Bolero, probably whoever played percussion on that, will never have It played better than that.

For ten years, I went to piano lessons. I don't think I'm a very musical person, and the theory quite defeated me, but I had a freak aptitude for Debussy and Ravel.

Composers are influenced by all the important music in their lives - and I suppose that since radio started playing popular music, that's as likely to be The Beatles or Aphex Twin as it is to be Verdi or Ravel.

The thing I realised about composition is, we remember most composers for four bars of music. Four singable bars of music. Pretty much any major composer from Debussy to Ravel to Mozart to whoever else - you can kind of hum it.

I grew up listening to Ravel, Debussy, Bartok and jazz like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart. It was incredibly inspiring! And I was given a guitar and I said 'What the hell is this?!'

I went to a music academy in Los Angeles, and some friends started playing me Ravel and Prokofiev, who I liked, but what really blew me away was 'The Rite of Spring.' That's what made me get interested in classical music for real and want to study it.

Clare Fischer was a major influence on my harmonic concept. He and Bill Evans, and Ravel and Gil Evans, finally. You know, that's where it really came from. Almost all of the harmony that I play can be traced to one of those four people and whoever their influences were.

When I was younger, I used to do that a lot: I would hear a part of a song that would really relax me and then put it on repeat. That would send me to sleep. It was quite obvious classical music, people like Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel.

Share This Page