A Quote by Gerry Mulligan

The first reason for starting to do the symphony concerts was to play this new piece of mine. — © Gerry Mulligan
The first reason for starting to do the symphony concerts was to play this new piece of mine.
I grew up going to the theater. That was one of the nice things my mom did was she took us to plays and symphony concerts and to the museums. Theater captured my imagination. I just loved the idea of that box, which is essentially what a stage is from a certain distance, a box with all this life going on in it. So, I was eleven when I wrote my first play. Of course, it was horrible.
When I auditioned actors I never make them act. I choose a long symphony, then I tell them to sit down and I play the symphony for them. Then I sit and I look at them. I always pick a piece of music that has up and downs, very dramatic parts, very quiet parts and really sensitive parts so that it can produce different emotions.
But we will play 6, 7 new songs each evening, approximately a third in the concert. I think it's a good balance. It will be very interesting to see the public's reaction. But i think when we'll play the very first new piece, we will be scared.
My father played guitar, so I always wanted to play for that reason. But I think the biggest reason was just the '90s in general - growing up listening to the Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day and bands like that, and going to concerts and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world.
It seemed to me that had Haydn lived to our day he would have retained his own style while accepting something of the new at the same time. That was the kind of symphony I wanted to write: a symphony in the classical style. And when I saw that my idea was beginning to work, I called it the Classical Symphony.
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.
I play piano, so when I'm learning a new or difficult piece, at some point I have to enjoy the music of the piece itself, and have confidence that my fingers know where to go. It's the same with acting, there is a point where I have to enjoy the play.
Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, 'Hold on a moment.' You play God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlour? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason. But with all my knowledge and scepticism, I have never been able to argue with a one-hundred-piece symphony orchestra, full colour, three dimensions, and I being in and part of those incredible parlours.
The first voice they hear is mine, the first touch they feel is mine, the first human face they see is mine. They just think I'm a strange tiger who walks on two legs.
Mahler wrote it as the third movement of his Fourth Symphony. I mean the fourth movement of his First Symphony. We play it third. The trumpet solo will be played by our solo trumpet player. It's named 'Blumine,' which has something to do with flowers.
I decided that I want to live the rest of my life happy with what I'm doing. So when I play tennis again, I have to play it for the right reason. I don't want to play to get my No. 1 ranking back. I don't want to play for the attention, or to earn more. I don't even want to play because the world wants to see me do it, even though it's nice to know that the world is interested. I only want to play because I love the game, which is the reason I began to play at age seven in the first place.
When I was going to high school, in the high school band we would play these kind of hour-long concerts for our parents. All the parents would come to the gymnasium, and the band would play an hour-long kind of orchestra piece. 'Synchestra' is supposed to be similar, like a high school band orchestra piece.
Each piece I tell stands on its own, and then it all ties together. It segues from story to story, and then I wrap it up - like three-piece movements in a symphony.
It's the horsey-shape piece that moves in an L shape. It's what makes chess complicated, and why stupid people can't play chess. Go play checkers! Knights are the first piece you look at. They elevate the game. No chess master wants to lose her knights.
My return to the theater in New York was so specific. I didn't want it to be about leveraging my exposure or my fame, so the first show I did in New York was an ensemble piece at an Off-Broadway theater, and I wanted to make sure that it was just about the play and about the experience.
When I listen to a symphony I love, I don't get from it what the composer got. His 'Yes' was different from mine. He could have no concern for mine and no exact conception of it. That answer is too personal to each man. But in giving himself what he wanted, he gave me a great experience.
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