Michael Tilson Thomas Quotes

Part of me is probably more conservative than people realise. I like my old string quartets, I don't like music that's trippy for trippy's sake.

All old music was modern once, and much more of the music of yesterday already sounds more old-fashioned than works which were written three centuries ago.

We built a bit of an audience at our university in Cambridge, playing Beethoven and Mozart quartets.

How did Haydn and Mozart produce such vast quantities of formally perfect art? They worked from a perfect formula. In music, Beethoven was the Great Emancipator.

As you get older, some top notes drop off and bottom notes appear, which I quite like. You listen to Leonard Cohen or Johnny Cash, and you see the advantage of the lower end.

I think the preservation of orchestras and what they do is worth expending all the ways there are to reach out to people who might not otherwise go.

I went on Ellen once, and even then, I was just a bad performer. It was nerve-racking at first playing in front of all her fans who really wanted to see her. Her fans are so young and accepting to new people, and it helped that they knew 'Marvin Gaye,' too.

I personally am into the minstrel technique - if I hear someone playing a lute or playing a crumhorn, it just moves me. I don't know why.

I've got great joy from rediscovering Western music. I love Schumann and Chopin, and those amazing symphonies of Bruckner.

I love the U.K. folk scene. In the States, nobody knows what to do with me. There's still a very narrow definition of Americana.

That was my first love growing up - classical orchestral music, especially Impressionism.

I've got this diverse education, growing up in classical music and existing between that and music that is more visceral, so for sure, I've always been interested in music from other cultures.

In Berlin... it's important to present a concert that will change their ears... so if you present a Tchaikovsky symphony, you get almost no audience.

I grew up playing classical violin and a lot of Bach and Mozart and the things that Einstein loved.

I think we have a lot in common with classical composers of the 19th century, although I'm not claiming to have their intelligence. They wanted to create a musical explosion, to blow the crowd away.

I think every artist reaches a place where they want to transcend genre.

I believe that classical music comes through listening and practice, and it can be fun both for the singer or performer and the listener or audience, as long as the performer is taught to recognise the pulse of the audience.

I think, until I was 16, classical music had just seemed like a little bit of a rhythmic wasteland for me. Coming from bluegrass, where one conducts oneself rhythmically, it seemed like such a different approach, and at that point the difference that I was noticing was a real turn off to me.

One of the most rewarding things is meeting someone after a concert who has never been to a concert before. It is incredibly rewarding when they say, 'This is my first classical concert.' It is really exciting for everyone.

I think we are really in touch with what's going on around us in the world of music, trying to push the bar forward and try new and exciting things that our fans can react to.

In Germany, people feel like they own classical music, that it is somehow theirs. Over there, everyone still learns to play, and the great composers don't seem alien.

If you grow up playing in church, it removes a lot of the boundaries that other musicians might have, growing up with sheet music or whatever.

We've been lucky because quite a few young people keep coming to see us play. We couldn't tour as much as we do if we could only count on the baby boomers.

I grew up loving symphonies. Beethoven is beautiful.

I love Mozart, and I love Bach, and Brahms, and - but at 13, I didn't understand any of that that I was playing.