Quotes About Orchestra

Playing pentatonic scales over orchestral music is not something I want to do or listen to.

When we treat music as an industrial commodity, and young people as merely consumers, we overlook the joy of participating in music... of learning to play an instrument, of joining a band or an orchestra, and playing gigs.

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.

the Chicago Symphony was in a class by itself. Fritz Reiner, the famous Hungarian conductor, was fascinating to watch. He was somewhat stout, hunched over with round shoulders, and his arm and baton movements were tiny—you almost had to look at him with binoculars to see what he was doing. But those tiny movements forced the players to peer at him intently, and then he would suddenly raise his arms up over his head and the entire orchestra would go crazy.

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.

To me it's no accident that all the symphony orchestras around the world tune up to the note A. And A is 440 cycles, except in Germany where it's 444. But the universe is 450 cycles. So what I'm trying to say is, I think it's God's voice, melody especially. Counterpoint, retrograde inversion, harmony... that's the science and the craft.

I feel opera is an expression of artistic excellence. To do it is expensive, as there's a requirement for an orchestra, good voices, excellent sets, and the fact that productions generally have only short runs. But I believe it's something we ought to achieve as a nation.

Listen to the triple fugue in 'Magnificat' - the first subject is seven voices, the second one has 52 different voices, the third uses five; then I combine all together. Such textures you cannot call primitive.

I say to string players in small chamber orchestras, 'it's always easy to become a passenger on the journey in sound, just adding volume to the whole. But if you play in an individual way, it makes the difference between good and great sound in an orchestra.'

It really does look like musical sheets, frayed at the edges, constantly played, coming to you in tidal scores, in bars of canals with innumerable obbligati of bridges, mullioned windows, or curved crownings of Coducci cathedrals, not to mention the violin necks of gondolas. In fact, the whole city, especially at night, resembles a gigantic orchestra, with dimly lit music stands of palazzi, with a restless chorus of waves, with the falsetto of a star in the winter sky.

On a good day, I view the job of president as directing an orchestra. On the dark days, it is more like that of a clutch-engaging the engine to effect forward motion, while taking greater friction.

Every symphony, for example, is a sonata for orchestra; every string quartet is a sonata for four strings; every concerto a sonata for a solo instrument and orchestra.

inhales. Digby feels the first stirrings of hunger. By such subtle signs, like an orchestra tuning up, the daily event that is central to life on the Coromandel Coast announces itself: the evening breeze. The

Notwithstanding these setbacks, the dream of a beautiful American orchestra goes on, and I share Dr. King's faith that each year we move inexorably closer to a magnificent opening night.

The stipulation for a contestant on The X Factor is an uncontrollable vibrato and a great deal of cancer in the family. The show will drag its sugary slug trail of sentimentality from now until the traditional Christmas single of an overproduced 1980s ballad doused with a lachrymose orchestra. Not so much a wall of sound as a shroud of sound, dedicated to some carcinogenically defunct auntie. As Oscar Wilde so perceptively put it, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh out loud.

I played the drums. I basically started off in drum line. So it was just straight percussion. Then I got into the drum set. I was in the jazz band and then all through high school I was in orchestra.

Initially we performed in halls with capacities of 1,000.

Conductors are performers.

The role of an orchestra in the 21st century isn't just playing, it's about developing future audiences and performers.

As a professional, you pick up ideas from your colleagues and the orchestras you work with, while coming up with mutual interpretations in very short periods of time.

Today all sounds belong to a continuous field of possibilities lying within the comprehensive dominion of music. Behold the new orchestra: the sonic universe! And the musicians: anyone and anything that sounds!

When I was in Cardiff, playing with the National Orchestra of Wales, they said they get letters from people complaining if they're smiling during the concert. Nuts, isn't it? As if you have to respect the solemnity of the music by not smiling. Music is this joyful thing that enriches our lives, and you're not supposed to smile?

I can go in front of an orchestra. I can go in front of an audience. But if you see me walking through an audience in the reception or through a lot of people, I'm still shy.

I've always liked string sections. I'm a sucker for melody, so it's fun to have strings add more layer of melody in the arrangement.