Watching him, I understood for the first time how you could really live music, how you could listen to it completely and make it come alive, so that it was part of your life.

When I saw him move I was mesmerized. I've never seen a performer perform like James Brown and right then and there I knew that that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

When I first heard the music, I thought it was great because I had always been interested in darker, dramatic music with horror elements. I liked and was inspired by that neoclassical style, so I thought, ‘Oh, wow, this seems like a perfect combination of all those things.

I have never seen anyone who felt music so strongly and deeply as my father. It upset him, moved him, excited him, made him sob and weep. Sometimes it was even against his will, for it caused him pain and he said: "Que me veut cette musique?"

I'm a fan first. I believed Duke Ellington when he said there's no bad music, just some of it is presented badly. As a kid, hanging around Church Street, the presentation of music was so powerful, I couldn't help but jump for joy. I had discovered art, or truth, or whatever you want to call it; I had seen a light I'd follow forever.

It was as if by becoming a musician and Music Master he had chosen music as one of the ways toward man's highest goal, inner freedom, purity, perfection, and as though ever since making that choice he has done nothing but let himself be more and more permeated, transformed, purified by music — his entire self from his nimble, clever pianist's hands and his vast, well-stocked musician's memory to all the parts and organs of body and soul, to his pulses and breathing, to his sleep and dreaming — so that he was now only a symbol, or rather a manifestation, a personification of music.

My God, I heard this guy's albums for ages and finally to be able to look at him and see how he does it!"

Listening to that performance changed my life. It changed the course of my musical career. I could listen to my heart's voice clearly because the music had helped me understand my mind's deepest desires. Today, I am happy and feel blessed that I followed the path dictated by my heart.

I have always heard in the music what I am finding out from the books: the man was a tyrant who beat his musicians with insults and temper tantrums. He never smiled when conducting (not even in rehearsals!) never thanked or complimented his men, never made them feel they were valuable partners or had even done a creditable job. He would fail to give them cues, then blame them with curses and insults for needing them! Besides being a compulsive perfectionist, he was childish, petulant, inconsiderate, monomaniacal, and monstrously self-centered. His technique was fear, and I always heard that fear in his music...Reading about him - especially books by people who worked with him - strongly confirmed what I had felt in my bones"

I heard Postgate's Desert Island Discs last year and I was very impressed by him as a man, and thoroughly enjoyed his choice of "When the Saints Come Marching In". Listening to a creative visionary, one's life suddenly feels exciting again - you just want to get making, and doing. Thank God for people like Oliver Postgate - when you discover them, life takes on a whole new meaning. What an incredible man.

Once I understood Bach's music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world.

I was horrified by modern 12-tone music. I said to myself, 'Maybe I can find something different... maybe salvation, liberation, is possible.'

I will give Mr. Freeland the credit of being the best master I ever had, till I became my own master.

Delaney turned me on to so many things. He played me the music of J. J. Cale, which was to become an enormous influence.