A Quote by Kurt Masur

You know as I started as a shy young conductor, I always wanted to cooperate. To build up the musicians. To help them to be better than without a conductor. And sometimes young talented musicians have to be encouraged.
The most important thing for the conductor is that he or she listens. Her listening will make things sound a certain way. If the conductor listens well, the musicians listen each other better. The conductor can in effect impose a certain kind of listening for everybody.
A lot of people think the orchestra is playing and the conductor doesn't do very much, but the conductor's the person that gives shape to the music, gets the phrasing, and if he has really fine musicians in solo spots, the question is does he try to help them phrase, or does he let them go?
After the war, once the bop revolution had taken hold, there were all kinds of young musicians, talented young musicians, who were ready for this fusion of classical and jazz.
I prefer it when the conductor follows me. It is more difficult to work with a conductor who does not listen - even if I understand that sometimes it makes sense when one person is ruling everything. But for bel canto, I have to have a conductor who listens and supports me.
I always tell people that, just to be a bad jazz musician, you have to be better than most musicians. The worst jazz musicians are normally better than most musicians, because you have to know so much.
I mean, 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.
There is an apprenticeship system in jazz. You teach the young ones. So even if the musicians weren't personally that likable, they felt an obligation to help the younger musicians.
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.
Musicians like to converse. There's always interesting conversation with musicians - with classical musicians, with jazz musicians, musicians in general.
A man gets on a train with his little boy, and gives the conductor only one ticket. 'How old's your kid?' the conductor says, and the father says, 'He's four years old.' 'He looks at least twelve to me,' says the conductor. And the father says, 'Can I help it if he worries?
When I was young I wanted to be a bus driver, because my grandad was a conductor on the Routemasters.
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.
A great conductor is an alchemical force: someone who can absorb the historical weight of a famous melody, the expectations of an audience, and the mercurial brilliance of a host of musicians, and shape them all to his or her interpretative ends.
Normally classical music is set up so you have professionals on a stage and a bunch of audience - it's us versus them. You spend your entire time as an audience member looking at the back of the conductor so you're already aware of a certain kind of hierarchy when you are there: there are people who can do it, who are on stage, and you aren't on stage so you can't do it. There's also a conductor who is telling the people who are onstage exactly what to do and when to do it and so you know that person is more important than the people on stage.
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.
If you're walking through the Union Square subway station - New Yorkers know it's obnoxious and crowded, and in the summer it's too hot - there are always amazing musicians playing, and sometimes there are multiple, different musicians set up in there.
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