Orchestra Quotes

I sometimes like to think of God as a great symphony and the various spiritual paths as instruments in an orchestra.  The gift that you have is like music waiting to be played.  You need only to find the instrument that will best bring it out.  You alone can never play all the instruments, and your music might not find voice in all the instruments.  All you can do is find the instrument that suits you best, play it as well as you can, and add your music to the great symphony of divine creation.

In or orchestra we have many nationalities, types, and temperaments.

If you don't have it in your part, leave it out, because there is enough missing already.

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.

Let me explain what I do here. I don't want to confuse you any more than absolutely necessary.

I went to study some orchestration stuff because I got so inspired working with all the orchestras.

I told him he'd have a heart attack a year ago, but unfortunately he lived a year longer.

I want to become less and less about the laptop. That's what's lovely about an orchestra - the physicality, the way every gesture relates to something you're hearing.

How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns?

The piano is like an orchestra - I'm very fortunate that I chose it as my instrument.

And we would play together, like fine musicians should, And it would sound like music, and the music would sound good. But in real life I'm stuck with that same old formula, me and my monophonic symphony, six string orchestra.

...Ori Kam is an outstanding violist who has already played as a soloist with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra twice, much to our delight and satisfaction, and has availed himself with distinction.

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.

Mendelssohn I consider the first musician of the day; I doff my hat to him as my superior. He plays with everything, especially with the grouping of the instruments in the orchestra, but with such ease, delicacy and art, with such mastery throughout.

I'm just not arbitrarily choosing to have five guitars play one type of thing. In that way there's a definite similarity between a symphony orchestra and the 100 guitar symphony.

Essentially, the [New York] Philharmonic is just like any other orchestra-they all have the spirit of kids, and if you scratch away a little of the fatigue and cynicism, out comes a 17-year-old music student again, full of wonder, exuberance and a tremendous love of music.

To this day I am indulgent toward orchestras that are trying to lift themselves in the world, while critics are busy assuring them that they are not the Vienna Philharmonic and never will be.

The Gods have meant That I should dance And in some mystic hour I shall move to unheard rhythms Of the cosmic orchestra of heaven And you will know the language Of my wordless poems And will come to me For that is why I dance.

They don't encourage quality today. When I was coming along, Columbia Records would sit with you and assume it would take two or three albums to get the act where it needed to be. Then the company would structure its promotion based on one, two or three years. They encouraged quality and innovation - that's why groups like the Beatles would use sitars, string orchestras and so forth.

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.

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.

Over the years it has been my privilege to lead performances with Saint Louis, the National Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra and so many other wonderful organizations.

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.

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

I don't get into politics, general or musical, but just call me if you get jury duty. Even in New Jersey I was able to help somebody.

You know, in some ways conducting is counter-intuitive. It's like winter driving in Finland - if you skid, the natural reaction is to fight with the wheel and jam on the brakes, which is the quickest way to get killed. What you have to do is let go, and the car will right itself. It's the same when an orchestra loses its ensemble. You have to resist the temptation to semaphore, and let the orchestra find its own way back to the pulse.

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.

My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.

I want to work with the big orchestras. I want to have a big family.

My ex-wife was trying to be nice once, so she took me to a concert in Los Angeles. I went with her to Symphony Hall, and the orchestra was playing. When the show started, the spotlight was sharp on this one man (Andres Segovia) and he had sombrero on and his guitar propped up like this and, oh man ... he was a master ! - I really heard it. That one guitar sounded like a whole orchestra to me.

We are all musicians in a great human orchestra, and it is now time to play the Save the World Symphony. You are not required to play a solo, but you are required to know what instrument you hold and play it as well as you can. You are required to find your place in the score. What we love we must protect. That’s what love means. From the right to know and the duty to inquire flows the obligation to act.

Only when every one of us and every nation learns the secret of love for all mankind will the world become a great orchestra, following the beat of the Greatest Conductor of all.

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.

I suppose, counting back, if the Beatles had been influenced by music in the same length of time ago - you'd have to put that into better English for me, thank you - they would have been like a banjo orchestra. They would have been doing show tunes.

There are so many parts of music that it's actually a pleasure for me to work with an orchestra, or a jazz band, or a choir, and use every element that the musical tool box can offer. The world of music I love so much, and I can change the costume depending on the part, and I'm actually in the film.

Duke Ellington's career traces the entire history of jazz. The repertoire associated with him contains the most important elements in the music and provides concrete examples of some of the best ways to present the music in the widest variety of settings-radio, TV, recordings, movies, concert halls, festivals, solo, small ensemble, big band, symphony orchestra, opera, Broadway shows.... You name it, he did it!

As you get older - for example, in our band we have members of our orchestra, like Carlos Enriquez and Ali Jackson and Walter Blanning. I taught them when they were in high school, and now they teach me.I'll regularly call Ali and say, "Man, can you break this rhythm down for me?" Or Carlos was actually our music director in Cuba, and he's been instrumental in a lot of my education, and I started to develop a saying with them, because they tease me all the time - you get older, you have that familiar relationship - I say, "You have to follow your young leadership, too."

It's really not a stretch. The checks and balances are the same. The drums are the executive branch. The jazz orchestra is the legislative branch. Logic and reason are like jazz solos. The bass player is the judicial branch. One our greatest ever is Milt Hinton, and his nickname is "The Judge."

The symphony orchestra had played poorly, so the conductor was in a bad mood. That night he beat his wife--because the music hadn't been beautiful enough.

Then the bow orchestra began to play an apocalyptically beautiful canon, one of those pieces in which, surely, the composer simply transcribed what was given, and trembled in awe of the hand that was guiding him.

The trouble with women in an orchestra is that if they're attractive it will upset my players and if they're not it will upset me.

The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies, It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess'd them

One has to build a fist against anti-Semitism-a first class orchestra will be this fist.

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.

It can and will be a more powerful sound but the orchestra has far more potential for expressive power. When I hear a great rock band it can make me feel alive, but when I hear a great orchestra it can make me feel human.

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.

We can't hear the balance yet because the soloist is still on the airplane.

I studied music for my first two years in college. When I went to UC Berkeley, I failed the admission requirements to get into the music school there, so I studied communications and public policy, which actually were a greater engine for my career than a musical education would have been. If I had gotten into the music department at Berkeley, I'd probably be a timpanist in an orchestra right now.

We ought to approach this challenge [of global warming] with a sense of profound joy and gratitude: that we are the generation about which, a thousand years from now, philharmonic orchestras and poets and singers will celebrate by saying, they were the ones that found it within themselves to solve this crisis and lay the basis for a bright and optimistic human future.

In Hamburg, there are three major orchestras, an opera house, and one of the great concert-hall acoustics in Europe at the Laeiszhalle, in a town a fifth the size of London. And that's not unusual. In Germany, there are dozens of towns with two or three orchestras. The connection with music goes very, very deep.