Nigel Kennedy
Nigel Kennedy
Nigel Kennedyis a British violinist and violist. He made his early career in the classical field, and has more recently performed in jazz, klezmer and other music genres...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionViolinist
Date of Birth28 December 1956
pathos profundity
You can't learn pathos or profundity.
hate play gigs
I hate complacency. I play every gig as if it could be my last, then I enjoy it more than ever.
adventure get-better want
I'm always improving and I want to get better and never hit a plateau. I find it an amazing adventure.
thinking people labels
I think Bach is equally a romantic composer because he laid the seeds harmonically for people like Chopin and the great Romantics, Brahms, so its difficult to you know all this like labelling and putting - I think Bach is attractive to musicians because he supersedes the labels.
mean thinking play
I can think and play stuff in classical music that possibly violinists who didn't have access to other types of music could never do. It means I'm more flexible within classical music, to be a servant to the composer.
jobs risk might
If you're playing within your capability, what's the point? If you're not pushing your own technique to its own limits with the risk that it might just crumble at any moment, then you're not really doing your job.
again anybody forget ideals people reached remember risk staying true
I think it's more important that I don't forget my ideals as a true musician. Will people forget me or not is not so important to me as staying true to my ideals as a musician, that's what people made remember me in the first place. Every now and again I will have to risk that people forget me, because I will stay true to my ideals as a musician. Without those I wouldn't have reached anybody in the first place.
both cause classical fantastic good great improvised music playing reason
The Guarneri is a fantastic instrument, both for playing classical music and for what I'm doing now. It's great for playing improvised music on, cause you get such great response. And for the same reason it's great for classical music too. It's a good violin.
jobs emotional trying
I see it as my job to try to keep Bach in the mainstream and present his music with, rather than without, its emotional core.