Conductor Quotes - Page 6

• Somehow, conductor as this superhuman conduit between the masters and the masterpieces and the immortals.

  Esa-Pekka Salonen

  Masters, Masterpiece, Superhuman

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The intensity of being in front of all these incredible musicians and tremendous conductors in these elaborate halls can be overwhelming.

  Idina Menzel

  Musician, Incredibles, Intensity

  "Idina Menzel: Powerhouse performer is getting comfy". Interview with Aidin Vaziri, www.sfgate.com. June 3, 2012.

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• It is so powerful when we can leave behind our ordinary identities, no longer think of ourselves primarily as a conductor, or writer, or salesclerk, and go to a supportive environment to deeply immerse in meditation practice.

  Sharon Salzberg

  Powerful, Thinking, Meditation Practice

  "Meditation Practice: A Paradigm Shift" by Sharon Salzberg, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 9, 2011.

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• If you're not filled back up quickly, you might collapse like a birthday balloon". I guess that's why acting is so addictive. For the director, that addiction will come from the love and trust he gets from the "orchestra", him being the conductor. That's why many directors fall in love with their leading lady/man: having someone say "how do you want me to be" is incredible.

  Matthew Jacobs

  Falling In Love, Men, Addiction

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• There's a metal train that a mile long and at the very back end a lightning bolt struck her. How long til it reaches and kills the driver, provided that he's a good conductor?

  Bo Burnham

  Funny, Humor, Long

  Song: New Math, Album: Bo Burnham

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• Years ago, I heard an interview with violinist Yehudi Menuhin. The interviewer said, "Do you still practice?" And he said, "I practice every day." He said, "If I skip a day, I can hear it. If I skip two days, the conductor can hear it. And if I skip three days, the audience can hear it." Oh, yes, you have to keep that muscle firm.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Firm, Violinist, Audience

  Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

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• Never wanted to do anything else than acting ever in my life. But I'm 20, and there's so many possibilities. It would be insane for me to say, "Yeah this is definitely it, I'm never doing anything else." I'm 20 years old. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know anything about life. So I don't know. I may be a train conductor in 10 years. I have no idea. And that's the joy of this all.

  Shia LaBeouf

  Joy, Insane, Acting

  Source: film.avclub.com

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• I had a tough childhood, yes. I was born in rural Bangladesh to parents who had had no education beyond high school. We moved to the UK where I grew up in poverty, in some of the worst conditions in a developed economy, before moving to the projects - heaven - and I went to unremarkable schools before going to university. My father was a bus conductor first and then a waiter, and my mother a seamstress.

  Zia Haider Rahman

  Mother, Father, Moving

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Zeal, the blind conductor of the will.

  John Dryden

  Blind, Zeal

  John Dryden, Paul Hammond, David Hopkins (2007). “Dryden: Selected Poems”, p.479, Pearson Education

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• Increasingly I think of myself as some strange and solitary conductor, introduced to a group of very dynamic musicians who happen to be my characters, and I have no idea how they are going to play together, and I have certainly no idea how I am going to put manners on them.

  Colum McCann

  Character, Thinking, Ideas

  "This Week in Fiction: Colum McCann" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. April 04, 2012.

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• I urge pupils when studying a work and in order to master its most important aspic, the rhythmic structure, or the ordering of the time process, to do just what a conductor does with the score: to place music on the desk and to conduct the work from beginning to end as if it were played by someone else, an imaginary pianist with the conductor trying to impress him with his will, his tempo first of all, plus all the details of his performance.

  Heinrich Neuhaus

  Order, Important, Trying

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• The eloquence of one stimulates all the rest, some up to the speaking-point, and all others to a degree that makes them good receivers and conductors, and they avenge themselves for their enforced silence by increased loquacity on their return.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Silence, Return, Degrees

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.30, Harvard University Press

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• I'm a geek and I'm a nerd, and I can listen into any piece of music. I think, I can usually tell you what orchestra it was, I can usually tell you what hall it was in. I can tell you, obviously who the conductor was, and who the composer was.

  Hans Zimmer

  Thinking, Nerd, Pieces

  Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

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• This year - a factory of semiconductors. Next year - a factory of whole conductors!

  Todor Zhivkov

  Years, Next Year, Factories

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• Direction is the most invisible part of the theatrical art. It's not like the conductor in the symphony orchestra performance because he's standing in front of you waiving his arms. You now what he's doing. You don't know what the director is doing unless you know a lot about theater and even then you can only deduce it. You know it when you go to rehearsal. You really know it when they are rehearsing something of yours. I learned more in the rehearsals for The Letter than I have ever dreamed of know in the theater as a critic. If it doesn't make me a better critic, I'm an idiot.

  Terry Teachout

  Art, Idiot, Invisible

  Source: bigthink.com

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• When I got out of college I moved to Seattle because it was the nearest big city and still didn't know if I wanted to be a composer, conductor, singer, actor. I just got day jobs and auditioned and took what came and the theater doors were the ones opening the most.

  J.K. Simmons

  College, Composer, Moved

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• People have an affinity towards things, and you don't know where it comes from. Mozart wrote a symphony when he was four, so it's said; the theory is maybe because his father was a conductor, it happened in vitro, and he heard the music before he was born, and by the age of four he knew how to write music.

  William Shatner

  Father, Writing, Symphony

  Source: therumpus.net

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• A conductor should reconcile himself to the realization that regardless of his approach or temperament the eventual result is the same-the orchestra will hate him.

  Oscar Levant

  Hate, Realization, Orchestra

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• In truth, I became a conductor because deep down I wanted to conduct Brahmss four symphonies and Richard Strausss tone poems.

  Zubin Mehta

  Symphony, Four, Tone

  Zubin Mehta, Renate v Matuschka (2009). “Zubin Mehta: The Score of My Life”, Hal Leonard Corporation

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• The singers all loathe the sight of one another, the chorus despises the singers, they both hate the orchestra, and everyone fears the conductor; the staff on one prompt side won't talk to the staff on the opposite prompt side, the dancers are all crazed from hunger in any case.

  Terry Pratchett

  Hate, Sight, Opposites

  Terry Pratchett (2009). “Maskerade: (Discworld Novel 18)”, p.86, Random House

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• Directors have a tendency to use their hands like orchestra conductors. They don't realize that the actor is looking at their faces, anyway.

  Alan J. Pakula

  Hands, Directors, Use

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• Men of extraordinary success, in their honest moments, have always sung, "Not unto us, not unto us." According to the faith of their times, they have built altars to Fortune, or to Destiny, or to St. Julian. Their success lay in their parallelism to the course of thought, which found in them an unobstructed channel; and the wonders of which they were the visible conductors seemed to their eye their deed.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Success, Humility, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.42, Penguin

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• Today's parents have little authority over those others with whom they share the task of raising their children. On the contrary,most parents deal with those others from a position of inferiority or helplessness. Teacher, doctors, social workers, or television producers possess more status than most parents.... As a result, the parent today isa maestro trying to conduct an orchestra of players who have never met and who play from a multitude of different scores, each in a notation the conductor cannot read.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Teacher, Children, Player

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• The conductor is a peculiar person. He turns his back on his friends in the audience, shakes a stick at his players in the orchestra, and then wonders why nobody loves him.

  Victor Borge

  Funny, Music, Humorous

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• I had a year at 3 when I wanted to be a conductor in the opera.

  Nina Arianda

  Years, Opera, Wanted

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