We have been working with Habitat for Humanity and we have built eighty homes 80% of which are being lived in by New Orleans' musicians. It is called the Musicians' Village and at the center is the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.

But for the children of the poorest people we're stripping the curriculum removing the arts and music and drilling the children into useful labor. We're not valuing a child for the time in which she actually is a child.

What I'm trying to do is find either existing properties or come up with properties or angles or stories which will create music drama. It's my obsession and most of all I would like to remain working in theatre. I think it's very much alive.

I hate most of what constitutes rock music which is basically middle-aged crap.

When I look at great works of art or listen to inspired music I sense intimate portraits of the specific times in which they were created.

My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems seeing a painting listening to some music some opera which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.

Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts - as the one which more than any other ministers to the human spirit.

I supply the music for Vampires which is a new series that's coming out.

So there's no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn't necessarily happen. I think it can but it doesn't necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured such as poetry music painting public speaking.

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilised music in the world.

Once I started working with generative music in the 1970s I was flirting with ideas of making a kind of endless music - not like a record that you'd put on which would play for a while and finish.

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very very rich and complex and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.

I think one of my favorite things to do is just lock myself up in a small room and listen to music and watch films for a day. Also I just like seeing my friends. We have pizza parties which means I get four friends round we eat a pizza and we're really lazy and we play PlayStation.

All I do is play music and golf - which one do you want me to give up?

Musicians are there in front of you and the spectators sense their tension which is not the case when you're listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music.

When people in stadiums do the Wave it's the group-mind collective organism spontaneously organizing itself to express an emotion pass time and reflect the joy of seeing the rhythms of many as one a visual rhyming or music in which everyone senses where the motion is going.

I saw music as a way to entertain people and take them away from their daily lives and put smiles on their faces as opposed to what I see it being now which is a way for me to actually communicate and a way for me to tap into my subconscious.

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

I get bored easily so I need to do a lot. I've started a record label so I get to nurture new talent and talk about music which is a passion of mine. I've written another book. And I get to come to work and do the TV show which is always really fun.

Those who have virtue always in their mouths and neglect it in practice are like a harp which emits a sound pleasing to others while itself is insensible of the music.

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

My heart which is so full to overflowing has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.