If we are able to get inside the music and inhabit it convincingly enough, it will cause everyone to find each other… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
The first year I started in San Francisco, there was an American work on every program and there's been a lot of… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
But those musics do not address the larger kind of architecture in time that classical music does, whatever each one of us… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
If you're curious, if you have a capacity for wonder, if you're alive, you know all that you need to know [about… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
Classical music is a wonderful 1200 year-old tradition that witnesses everything that it has meant and what it means right now to… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
You can't have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as your favorite composers. They simply define what music is! — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
But without the experience of actually singing or playing these things yourself, you don't have the same kind of involvement or understanding… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
But still as compared to many, many orchestras in the world, I think you find a lot more new music and living… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
Thank God for movie music. It preserves the rich vocabulary in classical music through challenging times. — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
The whole path of American music has been so much about the recognition of stylistic diversity, and the recognition of the importance… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
Part of my mission is simply that: to bring the world of the arts, particularly classical music, closer to people so they… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
I think music needs to be presented in a way so that kids can grasp songs, dances, simple music that's associated with… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
Extreme volume in music very often disguises a lack of actually important content. — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
Classical music is an unbroken, living tradition that goes back over 1,000 years, and every one of those years has had something… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
But you know in the contemporary art world, you pose a very interesting conundrum. All sorts of people collect very contemporary art,… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
A conundrum of music is that music brings people together, yet to become a skilled musician involves a certain amount of lonely… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
And what classical music does best and must always do more, is to show this kind of transformation of moods, to show… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
The real deep text of music and the whole reason that it has continued with the profundity and urgency that it has… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
It's kind of scary sometimes, I've seen this a lot in Asia. Children are given music lessons, very intensively I might add… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
If you're alive, you have all the experience necessary to understand classical music. — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
It's easier to interest a conservative audience in pushing the musical boundaries than to involve a young audience used to very noisy,… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
Part of my big message with all this is that if you are alive, you know all you need to know about… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
Pop music, which I deeply admire and wish I could play better than I can, is based on expressing one mood, one… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
If we are able to get inside the music and inhabit it convincingly enough, it will cause everyone to find each other in this… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
Being a conductor is kind of a hybrid profession because most fundamentally, it is being someone who is a coach, a trainer, an editor,… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
You know, they were returning to the language of the people and trying to use musical language, particularly as Copland did to create a… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
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… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
But those musics do not address the larger kind of architecture in time that classical music does, whatever each one of us knows that… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
If you're curious, if you have a capacity for wonder, if you're alive, you know all that you need to know [about music]. — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
Classical music is a wonderful 1200 year-old tradition that witnesses everything that it has meant and what it means right now to be human. — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
But a large symphony orchestra basically is a repertory company and it has a very enormous repertoire and it is important for the performers… — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
You can't have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as your favorite composers. They simply define what music is! — Michael Tilson Thomas Copy Share Image
