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When Merle and I started out we called our music 'traditional plus,' meaning the traditional music of the Appalachian region plus whatever other styles we were in the mood to play.

Since the early Nineties it's been very fashionable to say, 'It's all about the music.'

The academic area of new music or modern music festivals is not something which attracts me at all.

It is so important for people at a young age to be invited to embrace classical music and opera.

The marketing is just as important as the music, almost.

I had seen a lot of music movies that celebrated music or that showed the kind of joys from playing music, which is a big part of it of course, and not something that I would want to deny.

You cannot help but notice that schools that take music seriously tend to be more academically successful.

First, it doesn't surprise me that traditional music has experienced a kind of exhaustion in the 20th century - not forgetting that many musicians started to look outside the traditional structures of tonality.

It really is, to see that this kind of music is still so popular.

I have observed, too, that the people of the many countries that I have visited are showing an ever increasing interest in the classical and traditional music of their own cultures.