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.
Good conductors know when to let an orchestra lead itself. Ninety percent of what a conductor does comes in the rehearsal - the vision, the structure, the architecture.
When I owned the theater, I had the Glen Miller Orchestra. I had 20 girls singing and dancing. I had a cast of characters. It was a big group production, as well as ushers, ticket takers.
It's just that, when the orchestra look at me, I want them to see a completely involved person who reflects what we rehearsed, and whose function is to make it possible for them to do it.
A conductor can do wild things which can feel forced, but if you're directing from within the orchestra, you can't do that, things have to feel natural.
At such a loving invitation, Pinocchio, with one leap from the back of the orchestra, found himself in the front rows. With another leap, he was on the orchestra leader's head. With a third, he landed on the stage.
When I was growing up, in L.A., I went to these schools, Fairfax High School, Bancroft Junior High School, and they had great music departments. I always played in the orchestra, the jazz band, the marching band.
Very often, if I know the orchestra doesn't know a piece or it's a new piece, I have main ideas about it. But then we start to play and I never talk about places where they played so beautiful and so clear in the beginning that there is nothing to say.
You hear the same work by different orchestras, different conductors, violinists, pianists, singers, and slowly, the work reveals itself and begins to live deeper in you.
The Chicago Symphony is considered the greatest orchestra in the world.
Anyone could be in the orchestra, or sports team, or arts club at my school. It was precisely the kind of inclusivity that now meets with a sort of scorn and derision as a prizes-for-all culture that generates only mediocrity. There's something so insulting about the idea that including lots of people means mediocrity.
I am the conductor for life of the Staatskapelle in Berlin, which fills me with tremendous joy because I feel absolutely at one with them. When we play, I have a feeling that together we manage to create one collective lung for the whole orchestra so that everybody in the stage breathes the music in the same way.
I just initiated the project where I write music for somebody else to write the lyrics and also for the orchestra to perform. I've just initiated the project. That leads the project into creating an independent label outside of game music.
You have to change your mind with every orchestra because every orchestra has a different character.
When you play a concerto with a small orchestra, you don't feel it is as important as Carnegie Hall. You try to work out all the little problems. Once that's all done, trust comes in.
When I first wrote for orchestra, I didn't realize, when you have 20 people playing a violin line, that is very different than one person playing that line.
I conceived of an instrument that would create sound without using any mechanical energy, like the conductor of an orchestra. The orchestra plays mechanically, using mechanical energy; the conductor just moves his hands, and his movements have an effect on the music artistry.
It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.
Last year in Germany at a town hall in Leipzig there was a game music concert played by the orchestra and some of the Final Fantasy scores were played. This year there is another concert scheduled in the same location, for game music.
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.
The other saxophones, except as solo instruments, really don't have much point in the orchestra.
For many years, the government of Canada has massively supported orchestras and the arts in general.
I love the way Monteverdi's opera embodies the triumph of evil love in such a luscious way. The closing love duet is just pure amoral, liquid passion. The Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment sound great in the Albert Hall, and the Glyndebourne cast is fabulous.
Although we are being presented in Carnegie Hall, we have to furnish a budget for our guest stars, and for the music writing - which is a huge budget in any orchestra that plays popular music.
An American orchestra doesn't want to play more than it has to. I respectfully disagree with that attitude.
The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It's a collaborative adventure.
When working with an orchestra, you never spend more than 20 minutes per recording session.
I grew up in an era where an orchestra was like a treasure chest.
I also work with the regular orchestras in Munich, Germany and other similar orchestras.
In L.A., I played with Joe Pass and Gabor Szabo. Mick Goodrick plays guitar in the Liberation Music Orchestra, and he's a real special player. Then I did a duet concert with Jim Hall at the 1990 Montreal Festival.
Composers love to write for symphony orchestras because the symphony is the Rolls Royce of musical instruments.
A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.
My relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra brought me many times to London and I will always reflect positively on that early period of development with them - their patience, their warmth, their dedication.
These groups within a society can he distinguished according as to whether, like an army or an orchestra, they function as a single body; or whether they are united merely to defend their common interests and otherwise function as separate individuals.
It has to be able to play at the maximum expression and communication in every style, and the only way you can do that is - like Verdi said - working with a file, every day, little by little, until the orchestra's collective qualities emerge.
I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra.