A Quote by Thomas Beecham
At a rehearsal I let the orchestra play as they like. At the concert I make them play as I like.
Related Quotes
My wife Elizabeth and I started The Really Terrible Orchestra for people like us who are pretty hopeless musicians who would like to play in an orchestra. It has been a great success. We give performances; we've become the most famous bad orchestra in the world.
My wife Elizabeth and I started The Really Terrible Orchestra for people like us who are pretty hopeless musicians who would like to play in an orchestra. It has been a great success. We give performances; weve become the most famous bad orchestra in the world.
It was a huge honour to play at the Palladium with the BBC Concert Orchestra.
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.
If an ensemble - I don't care if it's a duet or a forty-piece orchestra - the musicians, the two of them or the forty of them, are all trying to play as tight as possible, as one person. They're trying to play like they are one person.
I've always said about 50% of what happens at a concert has to do with the audience. If you play for a dead audience you're gonna stink. If we play for a great crowd we're much better. You want 'em to make noise. It's kinda like sex, if they don't make noise, you ain't doin' it right.
That person who's going to a concert for a nostalgic reason, we're not really going to placate. We still play three or four hits every night. Now, we don't play them like the record. We try to find new ways to do it.
Charlie Christian had no more impact on my playing than Django Reinhardt or Lonnie Johnson. I just wanted to play like him. I wanted to play like all of them. All of these people were important to me. I couldn't play like any of them, though.
On indies it's hard to do, but in rehearsals, you make mistakes in rehearsal. It's really hard rehearsing a play or what rehearsal you get on any movie. That's where you get to make your mistakes, and you make big ones. So when you shoot [the movie] or you finally get the play in shape and do it, the mistakes are out of the way. If you're not afraid to make mistakes, then there is no writer's block or actor's block.
I never like to play for myself, and that is why I don't own a grand piano. To play for yourself is like looking at yourself in a mirror. I like to practice; that is to work at a task. But to play there must be an audience. New things happen when you play for an audience. You don't know what will occur. You make discoveries with the music, and it is always the first time. It is an exchange, a communion.
If you arrive at a concert ready to play your piece, that's not nearly good enough. You must have your music ready to the point where you can play it on a short rehearsal, after a long plane flight, on a strange piano, having had an unpleasant lunch, in an unfriendly atmosphere. You have to be so over-prepared that you can cope with anything.
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.
We have to play 'Livin' on a Prayer,' 'Bad Medicine.' We have to play them, and we want to play them, and that's what we're supposed to do. It's like going to see The Beatles and them not playing your favorite song. It's not the right thing to do.
The game is if the orchestra can hear each other, they play better. If they play better and there's a tangible feeling between the orchestra and the audience, if they feel each other, the audience responds and the orchestra feels it.
The music lovers of London and the country deserve to have something where orchestras can flourish. You have no idea how wonderful an orchestra like the London Symphony Orchestra can sound in a great concert hall.
I have seen Tommy Emanuel play; my wife and I went to see him and he just melted my face off. How do you play guitar like that? There are so many people that play at a ridiculous level and I sit there watching them and I'm like, 'Wow, wish I could do that.'
Related Authors
Alexandre Desplat Quotes
French
Composer
Andrew Lloyd Webber Quotes
British
Composer
Anu Malik Quotes
Indian
Composer
Henry Mancini Quotes
American
Composer
Igor Stravinsky Quotes
Russian
Composer
John Cage Quotes
American
Composer
John Walter Bratton Quotes
American
Composer
Krzysztof Penderecki Quotes
Polish
Composer
Ludwig van Beethoven Quotes
German
Composer
Michael Giacchino Quotes
American
Composer
Pauline Oliveros Quotes
American
Composer
Ramin Djawadi Quotes
German
Composer
Richard Wagner Quotes
German
Composer
Ryuichi Sakamoto Quotes
Japanese
Composer
Stephen Hough Quotes
British
Composer
Stephen Sondheim Quotes
American
Composer