Joanna MacGregor - Play Quotes

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I was given so much advice. About how my hair should be, what I should wear, which competitions I should enter, what stuff I should play. None of that was relevant for me. I just had a kind of instinct.

Joanna MacGregor
Not only was I fiddling around at the keyboard but there were all these other children of all backgrounds wanting to play every sort of music bits of classical, jazz, pop, improvisation. The Guardian - 26/05/2000

Joanna MacGregor
As I get older I realise that start has made me rather, well, different. It set down a tremendous template for the rest of my life. I grew up believing the piano is a great instrument because you can play everything on it.

Joanna MacGregor
As a professional I practice six or seven hours per day, though it depends on my schedule. That's how it is as a musician. It's only when you reach grade five you take them more serious. Until then I saw it as fun. I used to learn them by play pop tunes on the piano. They have harmonies and broken chords and can be used as building blocks to help you with scales.

Joanna MacGregor
I know I get up people's noses," "Everyone wants to pigeonhole you. Early on in my career I somehow got labelled 'Bach, John Cage and a bit of jazz'. But the fact that I love to play Beethoven, too, really infuriates people. It doesn't fit. They can't make sense of it. The received wisdom is that you can't possibly do all these things without it sounding terrible or crass or just plain wrong.

Joanna MacGregor
I got my apprenticeship, with the Young Concert Artists Trust, playing all these warhorses in Raymond Gubbay concerts. Some are not for me anymore, but I'd still play the Grieg at the drop of a hat; it's so fresh. I'm very careful to keep on playing a lot of mainstream repertoire. I'm not into being the court jester who just does the wacky stuff. Making the connections and taking people down new paths is what I enjoy.

Joanna MacGregor
School was strange, rather amusing - with a teacher standing at the front telling you what to write. The camaraderie was interesting. I tend to remember the things you can't recreate on your own - queuing up for your dinner, learning team games, which were a complete mystery to me. I remember having to pretend I knew how to play hockey, that kind of thing. The Mail on Sunday - 06/02/2000

Joanna MacGregor
Memory is the fear, and I play most of my repertoire from memory.

Joanna MacGregor
A lot of musicians are going to have to retrain. It's nonsense to say that traditional classical music is more complex. Contemporary pieces by Harrison Birtwistle are much harder to play than Mozart or Wagner. I know a lot of people don't want to hear that.

Joanna MacGregor
We're really not very good about putting music in a social and political context, particularly classical music. It's all sort of above everything. But in South Africa, everything is politicised. You play a piece of classical music out there and you are making a real cultural statement. Or you play with a marimba band and you are saying something else. I think that's the way things should be. The way people write about music makes it seem completely devoid of social context. And audiences drift away as a result.

Joanna MacGregor