How it works

But a large symphony orchestra basically is a repertory company and it has a very enormous repertoire and it is important for the performers to be able to know how to shift focus so that they instantly become part of the sound world that a particular repertoire demands.

Michael Tilson Thomas
Not a MindZip member yet
Company
Focus
Sound
World
Random

Explore more quotes

And at the same time, you are of course a performer, but it's very important that you understand that your role as a performer is to get the best performance from those wonderful colleagues that you have the chance to work with.
Michael Tilson Thomas
It's kind of scary sometimes, I've seen this a lot in Asia. Children are given music lessons, very intensively I might add and involving great technical expertise sometimes, but you can tell that they have been told only to play happy pleasant music.
Michael Tilson Thomas
If we are able to get inside the music and inhabit it convincingly enough, it will cause everyone to find each other in this new psychological space. And that's most exciting.
Michael Tilson Thomas
But those musics do not address the larger kind of architecture in time that classical music does, whatever each one of us knows that classical music must mean.
Michael Tilson Thomas
Being an American musician means being adventurous.
Michael Tilson Thomas
But a large symphony orchestra basically is a repertory company and it has a very enormous repertoire and it is important for the performers to be able to know how to shift focus so that they instantly become part of the sound world that a particular repertoire demands.
Michael Tilson Thomas
When I first was conducting as guest conductor in Europe 25 years ago, I would propose doing American pieces and grudgingly it would be accepted from time to time.
Michael Tilson Thomas
Being a conductor is kind of a hybrid profession because most fundamentally, it is being someone who is a coach, a trainer, an editor, a director.
Michael Tilson Thomas
In earlier times, so many people sang much more. You know as a kid you'd go to some kind of religious training and or summer camp or whatever it was and you'd learn to sing a lot of songs.
Michael Tilson Thomas
The whole path of American music has been so much about the recognition of stylistic diversity, and the recognition of the importance of music which was from one of the vernacular traditions.
Michael Tilson Thomas
You know, they were returning to the language of the people and trying to use musical language, particularly as Copland did to create a musical language in which all Americans would feel that they had a stake.
Michael Tilson Thomas
But without the experience of actually singing or playing these things yourself, you don't have the same kind of involvement or understanding of what these musical moves mean. And that is a very big problem in addressing the future of music.
Michael Tilson Thomas
I can't do pieces I only admire technically. I have to feel some direct contact with them.
Michael Tilson Thomas
And what classical music does best and must always do more, is to show this kind of transformation of moods, to show a very wide psychological voyage. And I think that's something that we as classical musicians have underestimated.
Michael Tilson Thomas
Conductors are performers.
Michael Tilson Thomas
But some people will say you just did these programs. Well, yes, the programs are important and I'm proud of the programs, but mostly I'm proud of the way the San Francisco Symphony plays these programs.
Michael Tilson Thomas
Extreme volume in music very often disguises a lack of actually important content.
Michael Tilson Thomas
Earlier in my life, I performed a lot of music. Some of it because I felt it was a demonstration, or a representation of certain intellectual concepts that were very exciting and important.
Michael Tilson Thomas
But if I can be convinced and then through the work that we do together, the orchestra can really be convinced of the big sweep of that communication that the piece suggests, then the audience will get it and it will be a good experience for all of us.
Michael Tilson Thomas
The first year I started in San Francisco, there was an American work on every program and there's been a lot of music by living composers and gradually that was part of the process of getting the audience really to trust me.
Michael Tilson Thomas
I think music needs to be presented in a way so that kids can grasp songs, dances, simple music that's associated with some particular defining moment in human experience.
Michael Tilson Thomas
They are representations of many shared hours of collaboration between us all. That's the real nature of the relationship the orchestra and I are trying to build.
Michael Tilson Thomas
But still as compared to many, many orchestras in the world, I think you find a lot more new music and living composers on our programs than many other places.
Michael Tilson Thomas
But you know in the contemporary art world, you pose a very interesting conundrum. All sorts of people collect very contemporary art, yet when it comes to the music which is analogous to that sort of art, they are not interested, or perhaps even hostile.
Michael Tilson Thomas
Classical music is an unbroken living tradition that goes back over 1000 years and every one of those years has had something unique and powerful to say to us about what its like to be alive.
Michael Tilson Thomas
Classical music is a wonderful 1200 year old tradition that witnesses everything that it has meant and what it means right now to be human.
Michael Tilson Thomas
But those musics do not address the larger kind of architecture in time that classical music does whatever each one of us knows that classical music must mean.
Michael Tilson Thomas
If youre alive you have all the experience necessary to understand classical music.
Michael Tilson Thomas
And what classical music does best and must always do more is to show this kind of transformation of moods to show a very wide psychological voyage. And I think thats something that we as classical musicians have underestimated.
Michael Tilson Thomas
I'm doing a little consulting. I'm somewhat retired, still a director of a company or two.
Jack Kilby
Take the tone of the company you are in.
Lord Chesterfield
So I decided to form a production company with my wife and our partner Diane.
Ray Liotta
Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.
Wole Soyinka
This kid's excited because he's with Bad Company and I'm excited because I'm with Chuck Berrys' son.
Mick Ralphs
It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
Warren Buffett
Hope is generally a wrong guide, though it is very good company by the way.
Edward F. Halifax
Without In The Company of Men, I could still be teaching, so who knows if this would've existed.
Neil LaBute
All business success rests on something labeled a sale, which at least momentarily weds company and customer.
Tom Peters
People are stunned to hear that one company has data files on 185 million Americans.
Ralph Nader
That co-operation and peace rather than industrial strife and strikes will best promote the prosperity of the employees the company and all of the people and even strengthen the nation.
Charles E. Wilson
Our loss was very heavy, especially in the officers. Capt. Sale, of Co. E, Duke's regt, was among the killed, making the third Capt. that has been killed in that company.
John H. Morgan
It's like, it's up to the people to fall in love with the song. The record company can only do so much.
Paul Westerberg
I used to be pretty reckless. When I was a runner for a production company, I drove a massive 16 seater van. I was only 18. I mean I look young now, but then I looked about 12.
Gail Porter
A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy.
George Jean Nathan
People who have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company.
Jeremy Collier
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions nor regret the loss of expensive diversions or variety of company if she can be amused with an author in her closet.
Mary Wortley
I didn't need to depend on the record company to publish my records.
Solomon Burke
So I've learned in the past, if a company approaches me and they want something like this, or something like that that I've done and I turn them down, they're going to do it anyhow.
Danny Elfman