"When I was starting out with record companies, there was a tendency to simplify the image as a prodigy. I have more than one adjective, and I've always tried to be myself and listen to my instincts."
"It's easy to be a prodigy. It's really hard to keep pushing in new directions."
"I find that Bach is appealing to a lot of different audiences. It really hits people at their core in different ways, but it also creates a meditative space. I just feel like I can play it, and it reaches people."
"I remember when I gave my first recital. I thought, 'Oh, my goodness, people are coming to hear me.' I didn't expect anyone to come, and then the whole hall filled up. Of course, it wasn't a big hall, and some of the people were my friends and family."
"I never felt like a prodigy. For one thing, the root of the word is rather monstrous, literally. I never really felt like a monster or anything abnormal, because I always had a lot of different interests. But kids tend to focus on one thing, and for me it was violin."
"Everyone is always making transitions in life."
"In music you can find your own niche. You can do what you want to do. There is really no job description. You have to find your own way, and that's fun."
"Sometimes if the point of a piece of music is to open a conversation with other people, it's really hard to open that conversation if you're telling people exactly what to do or feel or think."
"The encore should wrap up the audience's experience of the piece you just played."
"Through the Internet and technology, anyone can now seek out any artist, composer or undefined niche of music they find interesting. All on their own, without even having to stand up or go anywhere."
"As a young performer, what you need to be doing is building your technique and musicality, not promoting your abilities - unless you're ready to take on all that will result from such an approach."
"I've continued to pursue other interests in my downtime, but I'm glad I'm a musician. It's the perfect career for me."
"I wound up sticking with violin because it was the strongest current in my life."
"Phrasing is the idea of finding sentences and using punctuation in speech. I often look at the score to see what's written in by the composer to see if I can find clues to those directions, like what direction did the composer have in mind, and I try to incorporate those things as much as possible."
"It's really been enlightening for me to work with composers because I used to think that everything in the music was exactly what the composer meant. Well, it's what the composer meant in that moment when they wrote it."
"I grew up without TV, I grew up listening to radio, I grew up reading."
"By the time I was 12, I was starting my high school stuff in home schooling."
"Something new has the chance to speak to someone immediately. There isn't this expectation of what they're about to hear, so people can be really captivated, really quickly."
"I think when a teacher says that you're ready for something, it means you're ready to learn it. It doesn't always mean that you are completely capable of doing everything that's inside the piece."
"I think the things that I learned that stick with me are things you often repeat, even today, which is never stop learning."
"Always ask questions."
"There's nothing I really wanted to record more than Bach. It's wonderful music. It's - on a grand scale, there's a lot to it. There are - I can work on it for a long time and keep discovering more things, you know, that surprise me every time."
"If you think about it - if you watch a gymnast compete, you don't see their training behind the scenes. You just see the competition. You see the final result when it's polished. And that is very much what people experience with concerts. They go to the concert. And they see the final version."
"You're not supposed to stop and listen and spy on people practicing. It's supposed to be a private thing. But it's when you come face-to-face with yourself and you look for your flaws and you try to fix them yourself, it's a really intimidating process. It can be very discouraging."
"Kids would come up to me after concerts and give me drawings they've made of violins or, you know, landscapes with a violin floating in it or some sketch of a concert or a portrait of me."
