With American orchestras, in particular, because they play in such huge halls, getting a true pianissimo is very hard.
Personality is the glitter that sends your little gleam across the footlights and the orchestra pit into that big black space where the audience is.
On stage, I’m always nervous, but there is so much adrenalin, too. It’s strange because I have to turn my back on the audience, and my audience is the orchestra. I communicate my energy to them, and they communicate it to the audience behind me!
I had a musician friend once tell me that it’s not in the orchestra that you get the true test of the musicians but in the little trios and quintets where you really get to see if they’ve got the stuff. And the composer.
I created a foundation for poor children called Sinfonia por el Peru, where they play in orchestras and choirs, learn values and get away from the bad life, become better citizens in every aspect.
I sang ‘O Holy Night’ with the Vatican orchestra, but also a Blake – a lullaby that William Blake wrote for the Christ child, and I set it to music, and the Vatican orchestra played the music.
The sound of the orchestra is one of the most magnificent musical sounds that has ever existed.
My relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra brought me many times to London and I will always reflect positively on that early period of development with them – their patience, their warmth, their dedication.
Tactics, gameplan and players are all influential in how a team performs but the question is how to manage every individual in your charge and get them to play like a finely tuned orchestra.
I will never master this craft. Orchestras are very, very forthcoming with me.
Then when I was in grammar school I played the clarinet, and then, after clarinet I played the flute in college orchestra – besides singing in the college chorus and things like that.
When I was going to high school, in the high school band we would play these kind of hour-long concerts for our parents. All the parents would come to the gymnasium, and the band would play an hour-long kind of orchestra piece. ‘Synchestra’ is supposed to be similar, like a high school band orchestra piece.
I have recorded with a 60-piece orchestra, and it gives me satisfaction to have done an album entirely with acoustic instruments.
If the rhythm or beat of the music changes with a live orchestra, you have to think on your feet. If you feel like you are not on your leg, you have to make a decision to make it look as though nothing is going wrong.
I can imagine myself as an old man writing music for choir or orchestra. I don’t know that I’ll be touring six months out of the year in a rock band when I’m 60.
You can’t play a symphony alone, it takes an orchestra to play it.
I would love to do much more singing; it’s just one of those things where I can’t quite describe what it feels like when you’re standing in front of a forty piece orchestra, and there’s nothing between you and an audience but a microphone. It’s like strapping yourself to a locomotive, and I love it.
I recorded the song live in front of an orchestra, and yes, I was very moved, I was in tears.
I was always very aware of drummers. My oldest brother Henry was a drummer, and he drummed on everything in the house from the kitchen sink to stovepipes. He was the first drummer in the Gil Evans Orchestra, so you’ve got to know how great he was.
When I was growing up, in L.A., I went to these schools, Fairfax High School, Bancroft Junior High School, and they had great music departments. I always played in the orchestra, the jazz band, the marching band.
You have to change your mind with every orchestra because every orchestra has a different character.
What I love about piano and vocal is it’s incredibly pure, and it gets down to the essence of the song because you’re not distracted by an orchestra. When it’s just a piano and a voice, it’s about the purity of singing the song.
There is much modern music that is better adapted to a wind combination than to a string, although for obvious reasons originally scored for an orchestra. If in such cases the interpretation is equal to the composition the balance of a wind combination is more satisfying.
Orchestras have become used to the emphasis on the separation of layers, of the ultimate precision and clarity.
In or orchestra we have many nationalities, types, and temperaments.
So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.
I love the way Monteverdi’s opera embodies the triumph of evil love in such a luscious way. The closing love duet is just pure amoral, liquid passion. The Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment sound great in the Albert Hall, and the Glyndebourne cast is fabulous.
Fun can happen on the interior. Nobody knows about it, but there are fireworks going on inside your spirit when you hear a great orchestra playing great music.
No technology comes close to the effect of a live symphony orchestra.
About 13-14 years ago, I went back to my alma mater, Fairfax High School, and ran into the music teacher. She invited me to come speak to the kids about the viability of a music career. When I went into the room where I used to play every day in a big orchestra, they had nothing!
It’s really hard to smile when you play. As a performer, if I ever find myself focusing, it’s like, ‘Oh no – orchestra face!’ It’s not attractive at all, so I have to focus on smiling.
We had a normal childhood. I played baseball, and we played violin in orchestras three times a week. I learned more from that than anything else.
To not sing with an orchestra, to not be able to communicate through my voice, which I’ve done all my life, and not to be able to phrase lyrics and give people that kind of joy, I think I would be totally devastated.
I do read everything that we publish. We usually have to have two or three votes for a book before we take it on. So in that sense I suppose it is an orchestra.
My education as a film composer, you can’t not – if you like the orchestra like I do, if you are a symphonist like I am – you can’t not listen to John Williams’ work.
What I really enjoy about writing for orchestras is realizing that – and it’s kind of self-evident – but the fact that they are 48 individuals. It’s not, you know, a preset on a keyboard. It’s all these people who have opinions and who are making decisions about how to play.
The reason I like Steve Aoki is because I can trace my love of electronic music all the way back to when I was listening to not just new wave but to YMO [Yellow Magic Orchestra] which, to me, was the ultimate Japanese band and launched synth electronic music.
I can’t get anything out of an orchestra if I have the 10 best guitarists, but I don’t have a pianist or a drummer.
I’ve remixed lots of other people’s songs, from Adele to Electric Light Orchestra to Beyonce, so when my record label said, ‘Why don’t you give ‘Ibiza’ to someone to remix?’ I said, ‘Sure,’ because I like the idea of people reimagining art and making something new out of it.
One of our books has been made into a musical, ‘The Great American Mousical,’ which I directed at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut. And another, ‘Simeon’s Gift,’ has been adapted for a symphony orchestra and five performers. I’m also a very proud member of the board of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
In ‘Secret Life of Pets,’ it’s a huge orchestra – really, really big.
There are many wonderful orchestras in the world, but very few who have a character or personality of their own. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is one of them, and I think it very important to recognize and respect that character.
I’m a little less hungry as an actor than I used to be. When you’re a director, you’re the conductor of the orchestra, and when you’re an actor, you’re playing the violin. There’s a thrill to each of them, but as the conductor, you get the fuller sound.
Since my father’s death, a lot of people have made it clear that they’re not ready to give up the music. For me, it’s a big, fat gift. I get to sing with a big orchestra and get to sing orchestrations that will never be old.
I went to this little performing arts school in downtown Phoenix. You had to dance or act, and everyone sang in choir. I started out playing the saxophone, but I always wanted to be in an orchestra. That was a dream as a kid, and there aren’t a lot of saxophones in an orchestra.
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.
I miss singing with an orchestra because that’s the most uplifting thing that I ever knew. It is just such a fabulous feeling.
Toting around a full orchestra on tour is very ambitious. I would consider doing a show now and then, like do a show at Radio City or Carnegie Hall with a full orchestra.
The great secret is that an orchestra can actually play without a conductor at all. Of course, a great conductor will have a concept and will help them play together and unify them. But there are conductors that actually inhibit the players from playing with each other properly.
