Joanna MacGregor

“You don't rely on a great army of people to spoon-feed you. Today's classical-music world is very self-defeating. I love the fact that all these corporations are falling apart. They're sinking millions into acts and getting it wrong. And I know why - it's not about the music, or the audiences. So in many ways this is a very encouraging time.”

“Classical musicians can sometimes get very hung up on the idea that there's a right way and there's a wrong way. You can see this destroy a lot of players. Jazz musicians have a way of understanding that there are a lot of different ways of doing things. That's what's great about them, they're so friendly. And they are so individualistic - that's why they can accept someone like me.”

“The freedom of improvising over a bass line disappeared from music only in the 19th century, and we're still paying for it. There's a culture among classical musicians of being passive, and it stems from following the notes, rather than one's own instincts.”

“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.”

“Classical music has struggled to keep up. Unlike any other art form, it keeps on looking backwards all the time. It used to have a real museum culture. Then it went: "Oh my God, what are we going to do? Call for Nigel Kennedy. Quick!" Classical musicians have got to change or die,' she asserts strongly, 'but they just don't know how to. Audiences for classical music have dropped. The old blue rinse audience is dying out, and young people aren't coming in.”

“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.”

“The musicians who interest me most are people like Nitin Sawhney, Talvin Singh, Django Bates. They are not just writing music but performing it, recording it, putting tours together and running their own labels. That is what real musicians are, rather than over-publicised specialists.”

“My favorite composers tend to be great improvisers as well as great players. It doesn't matter whether they're contemporary or classical.”

“Being a specialist is a 20th century thing, and now rather old fashioned as an idea. I realised early on that you can be the kind of superstar who jets around playing the same programmes all over the world, or you can be the sort of musician who perhaps can be a little influential.”

“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.”

“You can give music variation without changing the notes. When you get close to a piece there will inevitable be tinkering. I sometimes wonder if concert pianists expend so much effort and energy finding new ways to interpret that what they really need is some more direct form of self-expression.”

“In a lot of classical playing there isn't much expressiveness: I don't hear a voice in the playing. What I really admire about jazz musicians is that they develop a sound early on and it's unique to them. Classical players are screened from that by always playing other people's notes.”

“I have absolutely no difficulty in coming out and saying Bach and Beethoven are great composers. You must school young people into great classical music, but you must also allow them to hear other music as well. At one point classical music colonised the high ground. Now we're reaping the backlash for that.”

“I don't really go along with this sense that you sometimes pick up - that is, classical music is superior to everything else. I think classical music is a very great music form, but I can also think of other great music forms. And certainly within each field, you have absolute geniuses operating. Over the years, I've tried to bring together different people from different fields, and I do try to put Bach and Beethoven next to other types of musicians.”

“I want to move away from complexity. I've done my time as far as virtuosity and piles of notes are concerned. It's what puts me off a lot of contemporary classical music - there are so many notes. In fact, I think I'm moving away from classical music altogether. I'm not sure that in 10 years' time I'll be playing it at all.”

“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.”

“If you want a nine-to-five existence with weekends off then don't be a musician. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now if I had children. But it hasn't worked out like that.”

“I quite like shutting the door, putting the answering machine on and sitting at the piano for six or seven hours.”

“Memory is the fear, and I play most of my repertoire from memory.”

“Once you start cancelling, there's always something which is not quite right.”