With electronic music, you are not confined to the acoustics of a concert-hall, and that inspired me to bring my performances outdoors.
In Hamburg, there are three major orchestras, an opera house, and one of the great concert-hall acoustics in Europe at the Laeiszhalle, in a town a fifth the size of London. And that's not unusual. In Germany, there are dozens of towns with two or three orchestras. The connection with music goes very, very deep.
Bluegrass has brought more people together and made more friends than any music in the world. You meet people at festivals and renew acquaintances year after year.
Music from my fourth year began to be the first of my youthful occupations. Thus early acquainted with the gracious muse who tuned my soul to pure harmonies, I became fond of her, and, as it often seemed to me, she of me.
Through my music teaching and my not absolutely irregular attendance at church, I became acquainted with the best class of colored people in Jacksonville.
My father's in the military, so we moved a lot. I was born in Jersey but grew up in Maryland until we moved to L.A. to pursue my acting career. Music came into it after that.
I was cast in commercials, music videos, and booked a lot of modeling jobs. But my acting career never took off because I was holding myself back. I was acting across from male partners who didn't know that I am trans. I was being taught by teachers who didn't know.
The marketing department is really an important part of getting an animated film to work. If the people running it are used to selling live action films and the hard rock music and the sex and all those things... Anything outside that, they just don't know what to do with it.
Brands are spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get to young people by using music as the vehicle. Being able to use music data and making it actionable so they can target and speak to these fans, that's super important.
I think the purpose of a piece of music is significant when it actually lives in somebody else. A composer puts down a code, and a performer can activate the code in somebody else. Once it lives in somebody else, it can live in others as well.
My own personal aesthetic is all to do with real actors and real locations and a kind of almost hyper reality and actuality to things. But the digital world, I explore that through other mediums, with music videos and commercials. Even 'The Road' was a real learning curve for me with digital effects.
I was the first Indian music composer to win the China Gold Award for 'Jimmy Jimmy' from 'Disco Dancer.' Adam Sandler repeated the song in his film 'Zohan.' 'Disco Dancer' is historical, as are 'Sharaabi' and 'Namak Halal.'
Wherever you're from, you adapt to your environment. It definitely made my music a little bit more explicit. Because I really was in North Philly, I listened to State Property and stuff. Everything my dad listened to, I listened to.
Adaptability is crucial to working on Glee because every day is adapting to something. Because we're doing a different genre of music, doing a different type of scene with a different scene partner, recording and dance rehearsals... no day is like another.
'The Beatles' did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock.
I like how fashion is becoming more like music. It's more adaptive to young kids. It's more adaptive to a more on-the-go lifestyle. More street vibe. But I've always been into it.
As you begin to realize that every different type of music, everybody's individual music, has its own rhythm, life, language and heritage, you realize how life changes, and you learn how to be more open and adaptive to what is around us.
If I were a doctor, I would prescribe that you addict yourself deeply and irrevocably to music and never, ever seek cure outside of more music. It really is the best drug available.
Music makes me high on stage, and that's the truth. It's like being almost addicted to music.
I do believe that when I'm writing music, I get addicted to the music of the concept of what the outcome of the song is, or the passion behind the lyrics.
