1.
When a human being without amplification makes a sound that is high and loud, it is almost unworldly.
Renee Fleming
2.
Fostering creativity in children is as important as any other part of the school curriculum because it feeds the soul. A daily dose of creativity helps children imagine a better world and then create it.
Renee Fleming
3.
Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.
Renee Fleming
4.
We are unique, each human voice, not because we are completely self-generated, but because of who we choose to assemble the countless factors that made us.
Renee Fleming
5.
We sing with the entire body. The sounds that we make emanate not just from the head, but from the whole heart and soul, and, most important, the gut.
Renee Fleming
6.
I don't want to be somebody who stands still and sings pretty. Each song is a world. Each song is a story. I don't achieve nearly what I want.
Renee Fleming
7.
Everybody's a work in progress. I'm a work in progress. I mean, I've never arrived. I'm still learning all the time.
Renee Fleming
8.
Someone once said that there are probably seven naturally good singing days in a year-and those are days you won't be booked. What we must learn is how to sing through all the other days.
Renee Fleming
9.
There's no performance where I never have to think about setting up a phrase or making a technical adjustment while I'm performing.
Renee Fleming
10.
It is our responsibility to learn how to speak to an audience that is less informed about music, to give it a reason to want to come and see us instead of going to the movies.
Renee Fleming
11.
I don't want to record anything unless it can be great and genuinely interesting.
Renee Fleming
12.
I've spent hours and hours doing research into Appalachian folk music. My grandfather was a fiddler. There is something very immediate, very simple and emotional, about that music.
Renee Fleming
13.
I want to get out of the major opera houses.
Renee Fleming
14.
So much can be gained from watching other singers, seeing what they do and what they don't do, seeing how they look when they breathe, how wide they open their mouths for a high note.
Renee Fleming
15.
The reason that some singers go on to become great artists has very little to do with their voices, but rather with the fact that they have used their instruments as tools for detailed communication.
Renee Fleming
16.
Perfection often creates such a flawless surface that there's no place for the audience to enter into a piece, while the idiosyncrasies of individual style are like windows into the singer's heart.
Renee Fleming
17.
The more you put into it, the more you and the audience will get out of it.
Renee Fleming
18.
Among the important realizations I had in my own days in the practice room was that if any one route to any one phrase didn't work after days of trying, then the exact opposite route should at least be explored, as well as every alternative in between, as counterintuitive as that often seemed.
Renee Fleming
19.
The student's job is to stay open-minded, to quell the knee-jerk defensiveness we all possess in the face of suggestions for improvement, and to maintain patience when faced with a process that is often slow, confusing, and frustrating.
Renee Fleming
20.
At this stage in my career, I don't have to take any big risks. You want to take a calculated risk, not one that leads to people saying 'yes, but there was that one time when she made that big mistake.' It's always a shame when that happens, especially if you've gotten by for decades without anything hugely tragic.
Renee Fleming
21.
I cannot imagine a more satisfying calling than my own: beauty, humanity, and history every day, combined with the cathartic joy of singing.
Renee Fleming
22.
In a sense, it's less about seeing how high up I can vault than about seeing how deeply I can explore my potential...Ambition for me is about the willingness to work, the ability to mine my own soul fearlessly.
Renee Fleming
23.
Music enabled me as a fragile young person to give voice to emotions I could barely name, and how it enables me to give my voice the unique and mysterious power to speak to others.
Renee Fleming
24.
Every singer eventually gets around to a Christmas disc.
Renee Fleming
25.
I have had a very difficult time with stage fright; it undermines your well-being and peace of mind, and it can also threaten your livelihood.
Renee Fleming
26.
Having to travel so much plays havoc with your personal life.
Renee Fleming
27.
Being steeped in the process of learning and exploring keeps me from becoming too nervous. Partly it's about not getting bored.
Renee Fleming
28.
I've always been inspired by artists who have shown musical and intellectual curiosity and the courage to take risks.
Renee Fleming
29.
Very few opera singers in history have been able to cross into popular music.
Renee Fleming
30.
I enjoy the more floaty, exposed, elegant singing.
Renee Fleming
31.
My parents discussed singing every night over the dinner table; I had a tremendous music education.
Renee Fleming
32.
One of my timesaving habits is to save all of my magazines and junk mail for airplane trips. I walk on the plane with a very heavy bundle, but by the time the trip is over, it can all be thrown away.
Renee Fleming
33.
I want to keep my voice young, with nothing heavy.
Renee Fleming
34.
I have a noble history of being rejected by a lot of places, only to discover that the one that finally lets me in is in fact the perfect fit.
Renee Fleming
35.
Music was language in our house. It was air.....I feel certain that if I absorbed any lessons at all in the first months and years of my life, they must have been about the work that went into making a beautiful sound.
Renee Fleming
36.
Well, any time Im preparing for a performance or even a rehearsal, its as if in a way, like any other athletes, these are muscles that support the vocal cords which are just I believe cartilage. It demands a kind of constant warming up and a constant feeling of where is the voice today.
Renee Fleming
37.
I haven't really been able to transfer into that extraordinarily other worldly creature, other than I hope on stage.
Renee Fleming
38.
I don't like to sing loud.
Renee Fleming
39.
I would love to do more private concerts.
Renee Fleming
40.
I do everything in the third person. Performance is about being someone else.
Renee Fleming
41.
In a way, being an opera singer is like being a very romantic sixteen-year-old who falls in love with great passion and conviction every month.
Renee Fleming
42.
I am so envious of my colleagues from 100 years ago who only sang new works, they hardly ever sang revivals.
Renee Fleming
43.
An interpretation exists because of what we find between the notes.
Renee Fleming
44.
A lot of bad behavior in singers is caused by nerves.
Renee Fleming
45.
My philosophy is that the people around us are there doing as much work if not more work behind the scenes and they're the last people you would ever be unkind to, so I hope I'm not a diva off stage.
Renee Fleming
46.
When I sing, the sound is a totally different range, color, all of it. It's all about the breath. You take in a breath and you make a sound.
Renee Fleming
47.
Contrary to the norm, as my technique improved my voice became higher.
Renee Fleming
48.
With classical singing you have to put out so much air - you project, you emit force.
Renee Fleming
49.
Because everything about the voice interests me, I felt it would be fascinating to learn a completely different style of singing.
Renee Fleming
50.
I was always a very good student.
Renee Fleming