Michael Feinstein Quotes

The Gershwin legacy is extraordinary because George Gershwin died in 1937, but his music is as fresh and vital today as when he originally created it.

I’m very mindful of trying to do something good in the world. When I see injustice in the world, it’s very hard for me.

The arts are tremendously powerful in bringing people with opposing views together.

I was 20 years old. I had moved to Los Angeles from Columbus, Ohio. I was working as a piano salesman – a terrible piano salesman. I couldn’t sell them. I could demonstrate them, but people wouldn’t buy them from me.

It’s great when people have the confidence to discuss their sexuality if it works for them. I can’t fault someone for not coming out, because I don’t know their journey, what scares them, what’s at stake, or how it will affect their personal life or family.

My entire career proves to me that if you believe in what you’re doing, you will reap the benefits.

For me, there is no point in doing a duet unless it is organic or there is an emotional thru line.

Sound preservation is not only the history of our culture and our country but also a document of life in the world. There is something with sound that is so extraordinary that it can be preserved, that we can listen to a recording made in 1925 and be transported back to that time.

There’s a truth that comes through when an author performs his own work that is unique and special.

I always try to get back to the original source of the song. It’s not always there in the sheet music, which is sometimes just a sketchy blueprint of what the song is about.

I meditate a lot and pray for guidance. If, in a moment of self-contemplation or meditation, I were to feel very strongly that I shouldn’t be an entertainer anymore, that I should be doing something else, I would stop immediately.

When people ask me where I live, I say I live mainly on the road.

I’ve always found that the most powerful way to create change is to be myself and not be afraid to express who I am.

Activism is a very admirable way to create change, but it has to go hand in hand with personal contact with the people with whom we have opposing points of view; without that, there will never be any movement.

Most of the musicals I go to I simply don’t enjoy, so I don’t go to them unless a number of people I trust say I have to.

I started out as a pianist and singer in gay and piano bars – they were the only places I could get a job singing show tunes.

Sinatra is so connected with the persona of the ‘Guys and Dolls’ characters even though he had great conflicts with Frank Loesser personally.

He’s a world-famous name to people who care about his music, but there are many people who have never heard of George Gershwin and those numbers increase.

I preserve things that are significant to me. Only time will determine what is important in the long term. But something can be rediscovered only if someone has collected and preserved it.

I just didn’t like the word ‘gay.’ I still don’t like it. It’s a dumb way of describing sexuality. I like ‘queer’ or other words, but ‘gay’ is a word that had a completely different-meaning word and has been reappropriated. I just don’t like it.