Lansky Quotes

If the music has a logic of its own - as I think my music has - an open-minded listener will apprehend and understand. ~ Paul Lansky

What's the point of washing off your ball when teeing off on a water hole? ~ Bruce Lansky

When you have performers, there's the uniqueness of live performance and what performers do in concerts. ~ Paul Lansky

There are, however, composers whose music can only be heard in a chromatic sense. George Perle, for example, wrote pieces that you might think of as leaning in a tonal direction but it's very hard to register a pitch as, say, the sixth degree of a scale, whereas in much of my music I think that's often relatively easy to do. ~ Paul Lansky

My psychiatrist prescribed a game of golf as an antidote to the feelings of euphoria I experience from time to time. ~ Bruce Lansky

On a recent survey, 80 percent of golfers admitted cheating. The other 20 percent lied. ~ Bruce Lansky

My perspective on the academic world is very favorable. I did certain kinds of things that I could never have done otherwise. ~ Paul Lansky

So Meyer Lansky was Hyman Roth? Was Marlon Brando Frank Costello? The confusion was compounded when quite serious newspapers started incorporating Godfather comparisons into their reporting on organized crime. ~ Robert Lacey

I wrote a lot of software to do various kinds of special things, and I loved the idea of composing pieces in an electronic studio. ~ Paul Lansky

Don't lie,Tell one lie,then you gotta tell another lie to compound on the first. ~ Meyer Lansky

Even today, I notice that some of my pieces are explicitly tonal; there are actually tonics and dominants. And then there are pieces that are not tonal. I tend to think that there's a dichotomy that has to do with the way pitches are structured. ~ Paul Lansky

Do not oversleep and miss the school bus-
you'll be late.
That's a habit teachers generally
don't appreciate.
Never tell your friends at school
that you still wet your bed.
They are sure to tease you,
and you'll wish that you were dead.

Never call your teacher a name
when she's not near you.
Teachers' ears are excellent,
so they can always hear you.

Do not read a textbook when your hands
aren't clean-it's tricky
to separate the pages when the pages
get real sticky.
When you go out for a team
it's always wise to practice.
When you are a substitute,
the bench can feel like cactus.

Do not copy homework from a friend
who is a dummy.
If you do, I'm sure that you
will get a grade that's crummy.

And if your report card's bad,
don't blame it on your buddy.
Kiss up to your parents quick,
or they might make you study. ~ Bruce Lansky

I came up in the '60s; that was a time when there was a revolution going on in music. Stravinsky had become a twelve-tone composer; even Aaron Copland was writing twelve-tone pieces at that time! ~ Paul Lansky

I used to go to the driving range to practice driving without slicing. Now I go to practice slicing without swearing. ~ Bruce Lansky

Some golfers fantasize about playing in a foursome with Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Sam Snead. The way I hit I'd rather play in a foursome with Helen Keller, Ray Charles, and Stevie Wonder. ~ Bruce Lansky

Parenting: Nobody really wants the job, but everybody thinks they can do better. ~ Bruce Lansky

In 1934, strongman Fulgencio Batista forced President Grau's resignation. Then in 1940, Grau lost his bid for the Presidency to his adversary Batista. Four years later in 1944, he did win the election and took office for a four-year term starting on October 10th. After Grau won the election and was the President elect, Batista still in office, blatantly attacked the National Treasury, leaving the cupboards bare by the time Grau was actually sworn in as President.
Since Grau and Batista were staunch adversaries, it is highly unlikely that any deal could have been made in 1946 to allow "Lucky" Luciano into Cuba, especially with Luciano having been exiled to Sicily by the United States government that preceding February. Still, Lansky had enough political pull within the Cuban government to prepare for a strong Mafia presence in Havana.
In October of 1946, in an attempt to keep his whereabouts a secret, "Lucky" Luciano covertly boarded a freighter taking him from Naples, Italy, to Caracas, Venezuela. Then Luciano flew south to Rio de Janeiro and returned north to Mexico City. On October 29, 1946, he arranged for a private flight from Mexico City to Camagüey, Cuba, where Meyer Lansky met him. Having the right connections, Luciano passed through Cuban customs unimpeded and was whisked by car to the splendid Grand Hotel.
Luciano, having just arrived in Cuba, was looking forward to setting up operations. Cuba would actually be a better place than the United States fo ~ Hank Bracker

I think you'll find a significant number of people who decide not to enter competitions because their music just won't fit in that world. ~ Paul Lansky

I don't think I'll live long enough to shoot my age. I'm lucky to shoot my weight. ~ Bruce Lansky

I didn't want my music to be seen as examples of an electronic culture; I just wanted them to be thought of as pieces of music. ~ Paul Lansky

Fathers and sons and brothers, all of us tall and strong and failing. But all of us trying. ~ Sam Lansky

I don't think there's something that you have to 'get' with my music. It tends toward the dramatic side rather than the narrative. ~ Paul Lansky

The only thing in my bag that works is the bug spray. ~ Bruce Lansky

I call the years when our children are between six and twelve the "golden years," not because everything's perfect ... but because the kids are capable and independent ... They're becoming fascinating human beings who continually astound us and make us laugh. And they build our self-esteem. They still adore us for the most part, not yet having reached that age of thinking everything we do is dumb, old-fashioned and irrelevant. ~ Vicki Lansky

I don't think of my music as being about something. ~ Paul Lansky

Over the last decades, the travel industry and media have unwittingly teamed up to create the gap this book aspires to fill. I read a lot of travel sections, travel sites, and travel magazines, and I realized one day I was getting punch-drunk on how fantastic everything was. There s just so much Escape, Undiscovered, Quaint, Top 10 Most Amazing . . . , Secret Beaches, Incredible Islands, Savvy, Frugal, Best Ever. These adjectives just don t connect with most of my experiences on the road life, misadventure, and a dose of Murphy s Law often get in the way. ~ Doug Lansky

I can't say that there's a common practice that has to do with pitch language or with the way pieces are put together because today, anything is fair game. As far as I'm concerned, my own common practice is a piece that engages the attention of listeners from beginning to end, and doesn't rely on or expect the listener to zone out. ~ Paul Lansky

Talking to a golf ball won't do you any good, unless you do it while your opponent is teeing off. ~ Bruce Lansky

Sometimes I imagine that there's a binary division going on in contemporary practice that has to do with chromatic versus diatonic. I notice that I tend to listen in a diatonic sense, that I register a pitch as a member of a diatonic scale, even in a non-tonal context. ~ Paul Lansky

I had been creating music on tape that was to be listened to as a recording, rather than through performance. ~ Paul Lansky

Very often, when you're listening to a piece for the first time, you're listening through a model of other pieces that you know. At a certain point, a piece becomes idiosyncratic and you start to understand it on its own terms. ~ Paul Lansky

The only place you're sure to find love is at the end of a letter from your mother. ~ Bruce Lansky

And this is how life goes: there will be times where you feel like nothing more than a patchwork quilt of all the worst parts of yourself, and then there will be times when the call to be better is just so lovely and clear, like a bell ringing at a frequency all the voices that keep you up at night can't hear. ~ Sam Lansky

You will always be your child's favorite toy. ~ Vicki Lansky

I was very fortunate to be at a wealthy institution. I do recognize the drawbacks and limitations of the academic world but it's basically the world I grew up in and there's no way in which I would have been able to survive in the so-called real world. ~ Paul Lansky

A mattoid is a miscreant who seeks to elevate himself by destroying society. Examples include the Rothschilds, David Rockefeller, Franklin Roosevelt, Meyer Lansky, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Hamilton, and Josef Stalin. Often mattoids are of high intelligence, tainted geniuses, despite their flawed character and lack of any morality. ~ Oliver Cromwell

With a piece of classical music by Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven, on first listening I'm referencing it with other pieces by them that I know. I think that most people do this - they listen to pieces through the filter of pieces they already know. ~ Paul Lansky

I've been really fortunate to have Bridge Records interested in publishing my music for the past 25 years. Most of my music is available in their catalog. ~ Paul Lansky

I've had a lot of fun writing percussion music. It feels quite similar to writing computer music. But I found myself in the role of choreographer in a way, worrying about physical movement and such. ~ Paul Lansky

All pro sports, as well as the NCAA, should thank God every day we have sports betting here ... We have the only agency in the world that regulates the honesty of games. ~ Meyer Lansky

I never thought that I would write orchestra music, but in fact I did write a group of orchestra pieces. ~ Paul Lansky

I can't possibly go to school today," Michelle pouted, "I have nothing to wear." Her ~ Bruce Lansky