34 Quotes by Nigel Kennedy

Why would you want to stand there waving a stick when you could be playing an instrument?

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.

I'm always improving and I want to get better and never hit a plateau. I find it an amazing adventure.

Bach was a top harmonist geezer, which is why the jazz cats love him.

If you do the same thing every night, that's the death of music.

I've learnt new scales through playing different types of music, like Indian raga scales, gipsy scales and harmonically-based jazz scales.

I hate complacency. I play every gig as if it could be my last, then I enjoy it more than ever.

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.

Yes, I mean like you know, having studied with Yehudi Menuhin that is like some direct route into Bach, because he was one of the foremost interpreters of Bach for the violin.