Orchestra Quotes

A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.

There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together.

The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.

A man must pay the fiddler, in my case it so happened that a whole symphony orchestra often had to be subsidized.

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.

I never use a score when conducting my orchestra.

Does a lion tamer enter a cage with a book on how to tame a lion?

I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.

It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

Sometimes there is a 36-piece orchestra going off in my stomach.

Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.

Our dead brothers still live for us and bid us think of life, not death--of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and glory of Spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets, sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.

[As a conductor] there has to be, between me and the orchestra, an unshakable bond of trust, born out of mutual respect, through which we can spin a musical narrative that we all believe in.

When I first wrote for orchestra, I didn't realize, when you have 20 people playing a violin line, that is very different than one person playing that line.

The sound of the orchestra is one of the most magnificent musical sounds that has ever existed.

I often play on the cello-bass side of the orchestra, because I prefer the deep sounds. I can't hear the violins well.

It's nice not to have the majority of the attention on me like there is when playing a concerto with an orchestra.

I've been a woman for a little over 50 years and have gotten over my initial astonishment. As for conducting an orchestra, that's a job where I don't think sex plays much part.

The guitar is a small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different color, a different voice.

God comes to us in theater in the way we communicate with each other, whether it be a symphony orchestra, or a wonderful ballet, or a beautiful painting, or a play. It's a way of expressing our humanity.

Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra - not choreography to the audience.

You can't play a symphony alone, it takes an orchestra to play it.

I conceived of an instrument that would create sound without using any mechanical energy, like the conductor of an orchestra. The orchestra plays mechanically, using mechanical energy; the conductor just moves his hands, and his movements have an effect on the music artistry.

The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra.

It's a collaborative adventure.

Remember, if you do the same act for 20, 30 years it gets a little boring unless you've got something else going for you... And the orchestra really kept you going. They'd laugh at all your jokes, even if they'd been hearing them for the last 30 years.

When you hear a large symphony orchestra.

for instance, in a concert hall, there's a big, sweeping sound that just doesn't get on to a record.

To me, the piano in itself is an orchestra.

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.

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.

I had a big background in listening to classical music and I started trying to compose, like I was playing the guitar but I heard an orchestra in my head.

The Beethoven Experience provided the opportunity to solidify the relationship between the Orchestra and me, the Orchestra and me and the public, between all of us and the city of New York, because Beethoven after all is a really amazing point of reference.

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.

Eventually we want to do a puppet musical with turntables in the orchestra pit.

My brother Leon started it all. He played the piano. In school they made me leader of the orchestra because I played the violin, but I followed Leon and the boys in his jazz band around.

He was making all kinds of sounds apparently with his mouth, and shaking his head and I thought, gosh, is he trying to stop the orchestra? Is it all wrong? It was just unbelievable.

The way it works: The orchestra plays a few selections of its own and I terminate the first part of the programme on piano, usually with a movement from a Mozart concerto.

Show me an orchestra that likes its conductor and I'll show you a lousy conductor.

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.

The Chicago Symphony is considered the greatest orchestra in the world.

When I owned the theater, I had the Glen Miller Orchestra.

I had 20 girls singing and dancing. I had a cast of characters. It was a big group production, as well as ushers, ticket takers.

In symphonic music, when you are conducting, you do the same thing.

You are feeling the whole orchestra, thinking ahead so you can prepare for a change.

Mostly this problem is contained in the fact that the US makes it so difficult for Canadians to get green cards (you heard it here), but if an American orchestra really wants a player, they have their ways.

When I want 30 musicians in the orchestra, I get 30.

For me it always comes down to what is a good song and I'm very old fashioned in the way that I like to make songs that have something classic about them whether you can play them with an orchestra or an electro synthesizer or an acoustic guitar.

Why write for the orchestra? For one thing it's a very challenging problem.

The other saxophones, except as solo instruments, really don't have much point in the orchestra.

Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.

The Russian composers, especially, tricked the symphony orchestra into the kind of dynamic, rhythmic thing.

These groups within a society can he distinguished according as to whether, like an army or an orchestra, they function as a single body; or whether they are united merely to defend their common interests and otherwise function as separate individuals.

I grew up in an era where an orchestra was like a treasure chest.

It has to be able to play at the maximum expression and communication in every style, and the only way you can do that is - like Verdi said - working with a file, every day, little by little, until the orchestra's collective qualities emerge.

I think this orchestra's strengths involve drama and voice.