Kendrick Lamar is 10-times the rapper I am, but I just feel I'm the best at getting my own point across.

People wrote the most beautiful things during the ugliest times.

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.

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.

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.

For me, I'm sort of a wanna-be composer, and I love being involved with the arrangements.

It's endless, the amount of things that music touches on that can help kids grow that are very, very practical.

Music teaches people to work together, which is maybe one of the most important skills.

I have visited schools that have music programs and those that don't. I see the way the kids act with each other.

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.

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.

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'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.

Beethoven's symphonies are not 'relaxing.' They are the most exciting things that have ever been created by a human being.

The best way to refine an interpretation is by getting out and performing.

I want to do everything. That's my problem.

I use Facebook quite a lot to keep up with my friends, although I had to delete 'Words With Friends' from my phone because it was wasting too much of my time.

You only live once, so I try to say yes to everything.

The violin sings.

I mean, the great secret is that an orchestra can actually play without a conductor at all. Of course, a great conductor will have a concept and will help them play together and unify them.

I like working with kids because I enjoy seeing the looks on their faces and, it's kind of selfish, I want a future audience.

I was lucky enough to have parents who started me on music very early, but most kids don't get that kind of exposure.

I grew up in a musical family, but nobody was a professional musician.