It’s different for people who have not seen a symphony conductor conduct from a chair. I feel very connected to the orchestra in a way that a conductor sometimes does not feel. I think it’s more visceral.
The other saxophones, except as solo instruments, really don’t have much point in the orchestra.
Not with the Rochester Philharmonic, but I formed my own orchestra, made up of musicians from the Eastman School, where I’m on the faculty now, direct the Jazz Ensemble and teach improvisation classes.
No, I don’t know how to get young people to start listening to jazz again. But I do know this: Any symphony orchestra that thinks it can appeal to under-30 listeners by suggesting that they ‘should’ like Schubert and Stravinsky has already lost the battle.
‘Geronimo’ was a huge amount of work. That involved 80-piece orchestras and Indians and Tuvans and all kinds of crazy people on that thing. That’s a real circus, that score.
I sing what I sing. And that’s recitals and orchestra concerts. To appease – no, that’s not the right word – let’s say to satisfy – any opera urgings that my public has, I’ll put in an aria.
Concert-going has become much less the thing to do, while people are still going to opera. This might be a harsh judgment, but it could easily happen that orchestras could slowly atrophy.
With an orchestra you are building citizens, better citizens for the community.
I often think of random melodies. And I pretty much hear in my head what I want to do with the orchestra as I’m writing on the piano.
So when you enjoy the beats, the rock music – maybe even toned down with an orchestra – you are enjoying the spirit of the black race. And that’s what I emphasize to the students.
And at the same time, I had my very first concert at the age of 16. I hadn’t heard a symphony orchestra before, and I was so deeply impressed I said I have to be a conductor.
When you listen to a symphony orchestra, and the basses don’t – there’s no bass part, there’s not that much depth. That’s why I’m attracted to the instrument, the bass. It brings depth. It’s like playing in a rainforest.
People ordinarily don’t think of their orchestras as important as we’d like them to be. People don’t care about their friends and neighbors who sit down to commit excellence three or four times a year, but they will go see the tall bald guy with three names from television.
Over the years, I’ve loved being on stage with an orchestra, waving my hands around.
I’d always loved strings. When I was in high school and saw strings playing on stage, an orchestra or a symphony, all those bows moving at the same time… wow.
I think it’s a very important collaboration between the conductor and the orchestra – especially when the conductor is one more member of the orchestra in the way that you are leading, but also respecting, feeling and building the same way for all the players to understand the music.
On the other hand, when I give it closer thought, I realize I’m not enough of a dictator to conduct an orchestra because it requires a pretty awful person. When you read these biographies of famous conductors, they are all awful people who fail in their private relationships.
Orchestra had a little brass ensemble on two tracks as well, but the rest was me. I knew I couldn’t continue in this direction, even if people liked it, because I can only duplicate myself.
For an artist, there’s nothing better than working with an orchestra.
It’s a great privilege and a highlight for choir and orchestra members to perform for audiences in live concerts.
An orchestra full of stars can be a disaster.
It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me. And also it’s to me the greatest instrument. I shouldn’t say that, but I believe that this is the only instrument I can really feel happy about playing.
I have always been an extrovert. When I was younger, I would go outside and sing to the flowers and pretend they were the orchestra. As one of my parents’ friends said, I was an odd boy.
Neil Amin-Smith and I met playing in classical orchestras when we were children. We are from the same area of London. We met Jack Patterson when we were studying at Cambridge University, and decided to start the band together.
While there used to be one or two Pops orchestras, now there are all kinds of European orchestras that suddenly look upon this as a golden wand that can enable them to make money recording this music.
At such a loving invitation, Pinocchio, with one leap from the back of the orchestra, found himself in the front rows. With another leap, he was on the orchestra leader’s head. With a third, he landed on the stage.
I still love recording and still love the stage, but like my dad, I have the most fun when I am in front of that glorious orchestra or that kick-butt big band.
I don’t want the World Dream Orchestra to be like a dessert whose taste is instantly forgotten as soon as you leave the restaurant.
The first nine albums there was never a Synthesiser, never any Orchestra. There was never any other player except us on the albums.
It’s not all that different with the orchestra. There are orchestras that seem to be encased in dough, so that first you have to break through the normal routine, and clear out the openings.
An American orchestra doesn’t want to play more than it has to. I respectfully disagree with that attitude.
I have a Chamberlain I bought from some surfers in Westwood many years ago. It’s an early analog synthesizer; it operates on tape loops. It has 60 voices – everything from galloping horses to owls to rain to every instrument in the orchestra.
Yeah, I would go to New England Conservatory a lot. My orchestra teacher ran a program for minority students there.
A lot of my music tends to combine electronics and orchestra.
I do basically what a conductor does with a baton, except I also play along with the orchestra. So I have to juggle the roles of playing the concertmaster; sometimes I drop the violin and wave my arms.
I am going to be contradictory to myself many times for the simple reason that I am trying to bring all the religions to a higher synthesis. Different approaches have to be joined together. I am creating an orchestra.
There was an opinion expressed in the newspapers that, after 20 years, maybe the Israel Philharmonic should consider asking me to leave. I thought they might have a point, so I asked my orchestra. They told me overwhelmingly that they wanted me to stay.
And what unity is to be had, at a time when orchestras are dying out, and when opera houses are about to close their doors; what’s going to come next – when nothing new in music, for the orchestra, is truly lasting: pieces are performed once, and then they’re thrown away.
So, you can set up an orchestra down this end of the railway station playing one particular area, and simultaneously at the other end something completely different going on. And in the middle they meet, or not, depending.
I sometimes feel it is to my disadvantage that I have not conducted the Cleveland Orchestra or the Boston or Chicago symphonies, but then I have had to sacrifice something in order to have enough time with my orchestras.
Yes, but I view Frank’s music as fully composed. In other words, the arrangements can work for any idiom such as a rock band or an orchestra. Frank was a brilliant arranger and could make his music work in any context. He proved that tour after tour and album after album.
When I was little, my mum would take me to see the orchestra, tell me to close my eyes and think about the story the music was telling. I always spoke about colours. I’d talk about how purple the oboe was.
When I was young, I was being pushed, against my will, towards becoming a classical musician. I had music scholarships; I had to play the violin and do orchestra practice and that sort of stuff. That meant I didn’t get to do any school plays. I desperately wanted to do that.
There’s nothing worse than working with an orchestra who looks down on working with a conductor who doesn’t want to conduct for you. You need to be with an orchestra that can follow you and respect you.
It’s funny, but to me, when you go to a concert hall and hear electronic pieces from the ’60s, I think they sound really dated. But when an orchestra plays a piece from that period, and it’s going to sound different every time, it feels more modern to me.
Let me say that I’ve never thought to conduct because the conductor has to think to the music before the orchestra. And the orchestra comes later. For me, it’s terrible.
It’s just that, when the orchestra look at me, I want them to see a completely involved person who reflects what we rehearsed, and whose function is to make it possible for them to do it.
I used to be selected for the Pennsylvania all-state orchestra. It was a thrill to go from my home town of Aliquippa clear across the state to Lancaster for the concerts. No kid is immune to that kind of experience.
The orchestra confides in me about their music director or their conductor, and I’ve never seen a conductor that’s been liked by everyone.
I played in orchestras all through high school and taught myself how to play guitar.
There’s sort of an open offer to work with a guy in Los Angeles who does big band and orchestra arrangements who was at least an acquaintance to Les Baxter before he passed away.
