You never know what you're going to learn from which pieces and which composers and colleagues are going to influence that thing you think you know.

Of course everyone has those moments of frustration now and then, when you say, 'I wish I could play well already - or just stop.' But it's too much trouble to stop just for a moment of frustration. It is when you keep going that you make the most progress.

I wound up sticking with violin because it was the strongest current in my life.

I like to take walks and getting out and seeing things. These experiences are so irreplaceable and give you a whole different perspective on the greater context that you're in. If I didn't try to take advantage of that, I'd be missing out on a lot of really interesting things.

I love performing. The sounds coming at me are dynamic, colorful and multi-layered. The energy from the musicians around me and from the audience is a swirl of excitement. Sometimes, I can feel the stage vibrating under my feet.

Bach in general was so good with the violin. He just finds the genius way around his music on the instrument.

If you think about it - if you watch a gymnast compete, you don't see their training behind the scenes. You just see the competition. You see the final result when it's polished. And that is very much what people experience with concerts. They go to the concert. And they see the final version.

I never felt like a prodigy. For one thing, the root of the word is rather monstrous, literally. I never really felt like a monster or anything abnormal, because I always had a lot of different interests. But kids tend to focus on one thing, and for me it was violin.

Kids would come up to me after concerts and give me drawings they've made of violins or, you know, landscapes with a violin floating in it or some sketch of a concert or a portrait of me.

It struck me that it would be fun to just play stuff with Hauschka. Not even have a project in mind, but just get together and make up some music and see what came out.

It's no good to do a piece once and then move on because it doesn't have time to develop. I try to play seven or eight concerti in a season, and generally one or two of those are new for me.

As a young performer, what you need to be doing is building your technique and musicality, not promoting your abilities - unless you're ready to take on all that will result from such an approach.

There's so many different ways to play Mozart.

You don't have any days to spare if you want to improve!

Edgar Meyer's violin concerto was the first piece of contemporary music I worked on in any depth. I was 18 or 19.

There's this feeling of creativity in Iceland.

As more people get into indie bands and alternative music, they're also getting more into other genres that fit those categories, like jazz and classical. It's becoming more rebellious to go to a classical concert. You're getting the younger art house crowd and regular students as well as those who are just curious.

I've always heard the same doomsday concerns and yet, every day, there are people going to a classical concert for the first time - whether it's on a date or being dragged there by their grandmother.

You don't need to be a performer in order to dive into the sensory experience of music. Simply get as close as you can to the source of the music.

I don't really compare myself to anybody. That would be very unhealthy.

Through the Internet and technology, anyone can now seek out any artist, composer or undefined niche of music they find interesting. All on their own, without even having to stand up or go anywhere.

What I do is creative. It doesn't seem like that when I'm playing a piece that was written in the past, but the score is just the outline and everything in it is relative. The key is to make this piece written by someone else belong to you and then connect to the audience.

Something new has the chance to speak to someone immediately. There isn't this expectation of what they're about to hear, so people can be really captivated, really quickly.

Always ask questions.

I think the things that I learned that stick with me are things you often repeat, even today, which is never stop learning.

When we talk about music, we tend to place our experiences into one of two categories: making the music and listening to it. Delineating the two seems practical and obvious. In reality, though, there are a lot of opportunities for overlap, and it doesn't matter how you get into the music as long as you connect with it.

Sometimes if the point of a piece of music is to open a conversation with other people, it's really hard to open that conversation if you're telling people exactly what to do or feel or think.

Phrasing is the idea of finding sentences and using punctuation in speech. I often look at the score to see what's written in by the composer to see if I can find clues to those directions, like what direction did the composer have in mind, and I try to incorporate those things as much as possible.

Obviously, something like ballet, you have music, you dance with the music and it's a very direct connection. With visual art, when there's no music that accompanies the art, such as great masterworks in a museum, you wind up interpreting what the artist is doing, how the artist made that work and what they're conveying.

When I was starting out with record companies, there was a tendency to simplify the image as a prodigy. I have more than one adjective, and I've always tried to be myself and listen to my instincts.

It's easy to be a prodigy. It's really hard to keep pushing in new directions.

I find that Bach is appealing to a lot of different audiences. It really hits people at their core in different ways, but it also creates a meditative space. I just feel like I can play it, and it reaches people.

I remember when I gave my first recital. I thought, 'Oh, my goodness, people are coming to hear me.' I didn't expect anyone to come, and then the whole hall filled up. Of course, it wasn't a big hall, and some of the people were my friends and family.

Everyone is always making transitions in life.

In music you can find your own niche. You can do what you want to do. There is really no job description. You have to find your own way, and that's fun.

The encore should wrap up the audience's experience of the piece you just played.

I've continued to pursue other interests in my downtime, but I'm glad I'm a musician. It's the perfect career for me.

It's really been enlightening for me to work with composers because I used to think that everything in the music was exactly what the composer meant. Well, it's what the composer meant in that moment when they wrote it.

I grew up without TV, I grew up listening to radio, I grew up reading.

By the time I was 12, I was starting my high school stuff in home schooling.

I think when a teacher says that you're ready for something, it means you're ready to learn it. It doesn't always mean that you are completely capable of doing everything that's inside the piece.

There's nothing I really wanted to record more than Bach. It's wonderful music. It's - on a grand scale, there's a lot to it. There are - I can work on it for a long time and keep discovering more things, you know, that surprise me every time.

You're not supposed to stop and listen and spy on people practicing. It's supposed to be a private thing. But it's when you come face-to-face with yourself and you look for your flaws and you try to fix them yourself, it's a really intimidating process. It can be very discouraging.

I was a student that responded well to knowing what to work on.

What I find really interesting is, whenever you see the person who gives you the portrait of yourself, the portrait seems to be a combination of their face and your face.

I've never loved composing, because I feel like other people do it better.

When you have live music in the background, people are usually talking over it. You don't actually get to listen to live music in your space all the time.

Is there such a thing as a normal childhood?

I feel like I had as normal a childhood as anyone, but it had a certain focus. Maybe other kids focused on sports.

The violin didn't keep me from doing things I wanted to do.