Music Director Quotes

#1. 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.

Joshua Bell

#2. Religious people were big on saying "the tongue is a mighty weapon, so use it wisely," and then forsaking this claim when the music director slept with the minister's wife or when the youth minister did what he did.

Tiffany King

#3. I have a lot of musician friends. I worked in radio as a music director, and I know everybody hears about the George Straits and the Garth Brooks and the Kenny Chesneys and all that, but for every major star, there are thousands who didn't quite make it.

Robert David Hall

#4. 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.

Joshua Bell

#5. When I was playing piano, it was like, 'I'm going to write a song using all the white keys.' My music director, who knew my jazz background, suggested I try big-band music, so we spent a year experimenting with it in concert, and the audience reaction was really good.

John Tesh

#6. The pastor of a parish will typically have no education in the chant or in music, and he will hire the first music director who walks through the door.

Richard Morris

#7. I would never have become music director of the Chicago Symphony, which would have been an extremely sad loss.

Georg Solti

#8. I feel that the critic and music director should have such a good relationship they can pick up the phone and call each other any time.

Zubin Mehta

#9. When I was to come to Washington the first time as Music Director of the Boston Symphony, Mrs. Johnson phoned us to find out if they could give us a party and who we would like to meet.

Erich Leinsdorf

#10. Working on a play is a vibrant and collaborative business. Everyone from the choreographer to the music director to the director to the writers work together toward the same goal, and everyone chimes in on everything.

Trey Anastasio

#11. A music director cannot and should not be chosen on the basis of a first date. It is not so difficult to make a good impression with a single appearance, usually containing some of a conductor's party pieces, works they have performed successfully many times before.

Leonard Slatkin

#12. Originally a record producer more or less hired a bunch of professionals to participate in a recording session, the performers and the technicians, and a music director was put in charge. That directly related to a film producer's job.

Tony Visconti

#13. Sometimes, when you're on the streets, certain music inspires you, and then you have a vision. But, at the end of the day, it's a synthesis of visions, so you have to think, as a director, of a scene, or how to deliver a line, or how do this visually.

Wong Kar-Wai

#14. A fantastic actor in a scene that's just closed off will be good. But when working with a director who knows little tricks - correct music, slowly pushing in - that stunning performance will somehow become even better. I've always seen it as a symbiotic relationship.

Matthew Gray Gubler

#15. The director's job should give you a sense of music without drawing attention to itself.

Taylor Hackford

#16. I'm a huge Hayao Miyazaki fan. He might be my favorite director of all time - the beauty that he sees in the world and the attention to detail. I try and focus on that while making music: trying to use as many real instruments as possible, have it feel as tactile and tangible as possible.

St. Lucia

#17. It is when music is added that a film can come to life for a director. A live orchestra, playing the score as a conductor watches the film on a huge screen, often gives a fimmaker the first real glimpse of his soon-to-be-completed work. That's where the magic is.

Robert Paul Wolff

#18. I like the old school heavy metal bands like AC/DC and Aeromith. I like that type of music. As the director, I tried to influence the type of music the bands in the movie would play.

Dolph Lundgren

#19. I think the power of opera has been shifted from the music to the director, because this is a very visual age that we live in.

Sondra Radvanovsky

#20. I've been a full-time composer for many years, and I'm still learning all the time. There is always more than one musical "solution" to each movie scene, but my goal is to compose music that works perfectly for the director, and me!

John Keltonic

#21. There's music in my films but you seldom hear it. Very early I got the idea that the important things in films were people - the actors. They are the intermediary between the director and the audience. They make direct contact. People to people communication.

Frank Capra

#22. When I began to direct, I began to understand and realise that everything that I'd learnt, both in music and dance and in the theatre, seemed to come together as a director, and I began to enjoy it. And slowly I let the acting go.

George Ogilvie

#23. I think I'm a whole lot to handle. I definitely am, on every aspect. I'm the video director. I'm the graphics designer. I'm the rapper. I'm the visionary. I'm the music producer. I'm the executive producer. I'm just going to end it off to be poetic: I'm the future of music.

Kanye West

#24. I often wonder when I make a film - I'm thinking of making a film of the Buddha - and I often wonder: If Buddha had all the elements that are given to a director - if he had music, if he had visuals, if he had a video camera - would we get Buddhism better?

Shekhar Kapur

#25. My character in 'Batman v Superman' isn't supposed to be Japanese, but director Zack Snyder said he'd seen me in 'Wolverine' and had to get me in the film somehow. Hearing that was like music to my ears.

Tao Okamoto

#26. I almost became a music major, but somehow I was so enthralled with the camera and becoming a director that I stuck with film school and theatrics.

James Brolin

#27. With bad movies, I have this image in my head of the director and the editor in the editing room watching a scene that is not happening, looking at each other and saying, 'Put some music in there.'

Gustavo Santaolalla

#28. Actors' performances in films are enhanced in a million different ways, down to the choice of camera shot by the director - whether it's in slow motion or whether it's quick cut - or ... the choice of music behind the close-up or the costume that you're wearing or the makeup.

Andy Serkis

#29. I always felt more like a girl than a boy, I don't know. Music was very important to me, movies were not important. I was not dreaming of becoming a film director.

Lukas Moodysson

#30. I see only one requirement you have to have to be a director or any kind of artist: rhythm. Rhythm, for me, is everything. Without rhythm, there's no music. Without rhythm, there's no cinema. Without rhythm, there's no architecture.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

#31. As a director, you can transform your vision more with the music.

Fatih Akin

#32. Every time I see a film or TV show, I think about how that composer made those choices and how that director envisioned music and how that could work onstage or in a film and how you could support that even further by putting lyrics to it.

Robert Lopez

#33. Honestly, as hard a profession as acting is, I think music is even harder. Acting, you're like a leech, because someone else does the hard part for you. They write it for you, then the director tells you what to do. You really just need to know how to pay attention, follow instructions.

Michael Shannon

#34. If there is one thing that, as a director, you don't want to be a part of, it's a group. It's the same thing with music. I don't want to be a part of a scene. Just leave me alone. It's just my nature, and it's nothing against the people that are in that group, but I just like to be left alone.

Rob Zombie

#35. For me, it's important that a movie is the congregate of all art forms, from writing to art composition to music to performing. Trying to keep a balance of all those is what I think a director's job is.

Mick Garris

#36. When you're artistic director of a program, you present the music you want to present.

Stanley Crouch

#37. Kenji Mizoguchi is to the cinema what Bach is to music, Cervantes is to literature, Shakespeare is to theatre, Titian is to painting: the very greatest.

Jean Douchet

#38. The record producer is the music world's equivalent of a film director.

Phil Ramone

#39. As a director, the biggest job is to discern the imperfections in emotional tone and then view it in the global picture of what you're trying to do, if that makes sense. It's a rhythm, like music is a rhythm or composition and art is a rhythm. Dialogue is a rhythm as well.

Robert Stromberg

#40. I write music to please myself. Hopefully the director's enjoying it too.

Carter Burwell

#41. You know, I love plays. I love the smell of a theater. The old rooms and the carpet and all that stuff. I love to tell stories. Even before I was doing music, I saw myself as a director.

R. Kelly

#42. I take it very seriously, music. I think it's one of the tools that a director has with which to kind of paint. The right music can sometimes do five pages of scripted dialogue.

Todd Phillips

#43. [YSL creative director] Hedi [Slimane] is a music-obsessed guy. I might've originally met him through Sky.

Zachary Cole Smith

#44. I personally find that each instalment has a different director, cast and crew, and I've also been in a different season in my life for each of them, so I feel like each movie is a unique experience that centres around my undying passion for music and dance.

Alyson Stoner

#45. I think there's a deep impulse in most humans to do creative stuff, whether that's music or art, photography or writing. Most people at some point in their life say they want to do something creative - they want to be an actor, a director, a writer, a poet, a painter or whatever.

Stewart Butterfield

#46. I will say that I'm going to take full credit for this. I knew Josh [Hutcherson] was going to be a star. One of the things you do, as a music video director, is spot talent. Th at's one of my things. I don't just do random people.

Joseph M. Kahn

#47. If you talk to any director, they'll say music is fifty percent of the movie.

Hans Zimmer

#48. When it comes to acting, it's about creating a character and bringing forth a director's vision. It's a weird feeling, because with acting, it's just not about me. I love being in that position, because with the music, it's always about me.

Lenny Kravitz

#49. Music is just one of the tools a director has with which to paint and I think it's one of the most effective.

Todd Phillips

#50. In creating music you are the writer, the director, the producer, you create it from scratch. Obviously in playing a role in a film, you take guidance and put your trust into the director. You come into it and you really trust people.

Justin Timberlake

#51. A lot of the music editing job is communication and working out what a director really wants the music to be.

Steven Price

#52. To be a film director is not a democracy, it's really a tyranny. You're the head of the project, for better rather than worse. I write the film and I direct the film, I decide who's going to be in it, I decide on the editing, I put in the music from my own record collection.

Woody Allen

#53. Music video played a huge role in developing my sensibility as a director.

Tamra Davis

#54. There's something special about working with picture and adding music to picture that really takes you to a whole new level. It's always the director's picture first, and I'm there to help tell the story.

Lior Ron

#55. As my other obligations are beginning to take an inordinate amount of time, I have asked to step down as WMG's board chairman, effective January 31, 2012. However, I will remain a director of the company and in that way, continue my association with Warner Music and its extraordinary people.

Edgar Bronfman Jr.

#56. Ifukube's music was rarely tampered with or shortened by Honda after it had been recorded and the director gave his composer total freedom in writing whatever music he deemed appropriate.

Peter H. Brothers