When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling... our actions and lives are always the richer for it.

With every year of playing, you want to relax one more muscle. Why? Because the more tense you are, the less you can hear.

Practicing is not only playing your instrument, either by yourself or rehearsing with others - it also includes imagining yourself practicing. Your brain forms the same neural connections and muscle memory whether you are imagining the task or actually doing it.

My involvement in the political arena is to make sure there's a place for culture.

Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at peace.

The role of the musician is to go from concept to full execution. Put another way, it's to go from understanding the content of something to really learning how to communicate it and make sure it's well-received and lives in somebody else.

People will ask, 'Are you famous?' And I always answer, 'My mother thinks so.'