Buddy Rich Quotes

My whole life, I've been watching conductors. I was 7 the first time I played with a conductor. Seeing the ones that do it well, it's an amazing thing.

I think this orchestra's strengths involve drama and voice.

I love doing concert music.

I recently did a piece for the Boston Pops and John Williams, and I hope that it's as well a composed piece as I've ever done for any other medium or occasion.

A Beethoven symphony should be rehearsed like chamber music, only for a lot more people.

I love to conduct opera.

There's the Bacon society, which is fostered by his fourth wife Helen Bacon, but I don't know what kind of performances his music gets. He wrote symphonic music and some chorale music.

When we first started playing we did a lot of rehearsing. We used to write out everything. In fact, that's the way everybody rehearses: we play the tunes and improvise.

I like to create the music I hear in my interior. As a conductor, you have the ability to squeeze the sounds and interpretation you asked for from 50 to 80 people.

If anything, when I was young, I wanted to be an orchestra.

Improvising is writing, too - there was no music and now there's music. So that's composition. And any time you take any sort of a performance liberty, you're making a compositional choice. I don't know a serious performer who hasn't made compositional decisions, who hasn't engaged in the art of composition.

One of the most important elements in teaching, conducting, and performing, all three, is listening.

In contrast, traditional classical music starts from an abstract musical schema. This is then notated and only expressed in concrete sound as a last stage, when it is performed.

I know that John Adams has had a very hard time directing French ensembles.

To do it always right, that is what music is to me.

Let me say that I've never thought to conduct because the conductor has to think to the music before the orchestra. And the orchestra comes later. For me, it's terrible.

If you're going to start with melody you'll need some tympani, I think.

Over the years, I've loved being on stage with an orchestra, waving my hands around.

We can't afford big symphonies but we commission works that sound rich and symphonic because of the nature of the instrumentation and the people we work with.

There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.

Classical - perhaps I should say 'orchestral' - music is so digital, so cut up, rhythmically, pitchwise and in terms of the roles of the musicians. It's all in little boxes. The reason you get child prodigies in chess, arithmetic, and classical composition is that they are all worlds of discontinuous, parceled-up possibilities.

There is no 'perfect' in music. If I ever came off the stage and felt it could not be better, it would then be time to quit.

Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.

After conducting Wagner, Beethoven's triple concerto is like taking an Alka Seltzer.

Music is a performing art, as any Native American will tell you. It isn't there in the score.