Julian Bream Quotes

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Julian Bream

Profession : Musician

Birth : July 15, 1933

I'm a very bad teacher.

Julian Bream

I love playing jazz because I love the freedom you have to improvise. It has given me a feeling in my classical repertoire of creating the atmosphere of the here and now.

Julian Bream

My father was a very clever man. My mother was not clever. An extraordinary woman, but simple.

Julian Bream

I used to drive myself about in an old Austin van... and then have to sleep in the back because I couldn't afford a hotel.

Julian Bream

When I feel like improvising, I always improvise on the guitar, never on the lute. It's as natural to me as breathing.

Julian Bream

I just knew I had to play the guitar.

Julian Bream

The future of the guitar is every bit as important as its past.

Julian Bream

What do I think of digital recording? Well, it's all right. But those old thorn needles, now, that was a sound.

Julian Bream

Ideally the performer has a special function. Which is to bring the listener to the edge of that experience and to open the doors of this perception in such a way that those who wish to enter can.

Julian Bream

I enjoy having a large audience, but I don't do anything special to attract them.

Julian Bream

When my father saw that I was interested in following such a career he had many reservations. His feeling was that there was no chance to earn a livelihood unless I played jazz or something similar.

Julian Bream

My own style on the guitar grew out of my experience with the lute. I suppose some people might say I play each like the other. And of course I know a lot of guitar fans who wish I would stop playing the lute and vice versa.

Julian Bream

I do think there is a valid reason that Segovia commissioned the composers he did. He was very much a pioneer, and what he wanted was a very listenable repertory. But I'm interested in different aspects of the guitar, and of music.

Julian Bream

It's very good for one's brain and muscular system to work in harmony. If you keep up your playing it just keeps things ticking over.

Julian Bream

Guitar was just a hobby, but it seemed to me that the instrument had possibilities, not least of which was that there was no one else playing it. I could be, as it were, the best boy in an all-girls school.

Julian Bream

Music has been my real solace. And that's why I play music. And that's why I'm so determined, or have been so determined to pursue what I wanted to do, come what may.

Julian Bream

I devoted my life to music for a reason, and the reason wasn't because I wanted to get on or make money, but to try to fulfil myself and also to give people pleasure. That's been my credo.

Julian Bream

I think Englishmen or Northern Europeans in general are more naturally attracted to the lute than to the guitar, which always seems Spanish exotic - to our ears.

Julian Bream

What is a seemingly conservative Englishman doing, leading the world in the mastery of a classically Spanish instrument? Debussy wrote some of the best Spanish music, and the only time he was ever in the country, he saw a bullfight which made him ill.

Julian Bream

I was passionately interested in Elizabethan history at school, so it was natural for me as a musician to take interest in the music of that period.

Julian Bream