You know, they were returning to the language of the people and trying to use musical language, particularly as Copland did to create a musical language in which all Americans would feel that they had a stake.- Michael Tilson Thomas
When I first was conducting as guest conductor in Europe 25 years ago, I would propose doing American pieces and grudgingly it would be accepted from time to time.
They are representations of many shared hours of collaboration between us all. That's the real nature of the relationship the orchestra and I are trying to build.
The whole path of American music has been so much about the recognition of stylistic diversity, and the recognition of the importance of music which was from one of the vernacular traditions.
The first year I started in San Francisco, there was an American work on every program and there's been a lot of music by living composers and gradually that was part of the process of getting the audience really to trust me.
It's kind of scary sometimes, I have seen this a lot in Asia. Children are given music lessons, very intensively I might add and involving great technical expertise sometimes, but you can tell that they have been told only to play happy pleasant music.
In earlier times, so many people sang much more. You know as a kid you would go to some kind of religious training and or summer camp or whatever it was and you would learn to sing a lot of songs.
If we are able to get inside the music and inhabit it convincingly enough, it will cause everyone to find each other in this new psychological space. And that is most exciting.
I think music needs to be presented in a way so that kids can grasp songs, dances, simple music that is associated with some particular defining moment in human experience.
I can't do pieces I only admire technically. I have to feel some direct contact with them.
Extreme volume in music very often disguises a lack of actually important content.
Earlier in my life, I performed a lot of music. Some of it because I felt it was a demonstration, or a representation of certain intellectual concepts that were very exciting and important.
Conductors are performers.
But you know in the contemporary art world, you pose a very interesting conundrum. All sorts of people collect very contemporary art, yet when it comes to the music which is analogous to that sort of art, they are not interested, or perhaps even hostile.
But without the experience of actually singing or playing these things yourself, you do not have the same kind of involvement or understanding of what these musical moves mean. And that is a very big problem in addressing the future of music.
