Hagood Hardy discusses playing with George Shearing Quintet

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Hagood Hardy on being 'visually oriented' musically

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Hagood Hardy discusses The Homecoming

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Q: “[‘The Homecoming’ was] an enormous commercial success and that really led you into that kind of large orchestra pop music recording, didn’t it?”

A: “I have a rather ambivalent nature in music. You know, I started seven years of classical piano lessons and I guess, the Russian romanticists appealed to me more than anything. Rakhmaninov, I'm still in love with Rakhmaninov, and I think that that's reflected in some of the way I approach some of the pop music, too. So therefore, I feel that it's very consistent for me to record and become known for that kind of music as well as jazz because the first seven or eight years of my musical experience were with that. Then jazz came along and it wasn't until I started to write. When I came back, I play, I did nothing but play. I wanted to be an instrumentalist. I wanted to be a jazz player for fourteen years, and then I started to get into writing, and to be quite honest with you, now, the complete, wild joy that you get out of hearing something back that you've struggled over and worked over and painted the whole picture is just fantastic. It's just the most unbelievable feeling.”