You finally have to learn to pull all the different kinds of teaching and training and coaching together on you own, so that your voice and body and technique for a sound that is consistent and solid.

My mother was the worst kind of stage mother. She would make me and my younger sister and brother little duckling costumes and put us in kiddie shows.

I don't like to sing loud.

I have had a very difficult time with stage fright; it undermines your well-being and peace of mind, and it can also threaten your livelihood.

I do everything in the third person. Performance is about being someone else.

Among the important realizations I had in my own days in the practice room was that if any one route to any one phrase didn't work after days of trying, then the exact opposite route should at least be explored, as well as every alternative in between, as counterintuitive as that often seemed.

Your brain has a music room, and evolution would not have gone to the trouble of designing that if it didn't have some benefits. So, that suggests to me that we and our ancestors have had music as a central part of our experience for eons. And we're just beginning to understand how that might be. I think that's fascinating.