Jeffrey Tate Quotes

#1. Basically speaking, conducting is quite a healthy profession.

Jeffrey Tate

#2. The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet.

Jeffrey Tate

#3. I can't even touch another conductor's baton. The center of gravity, the feel of the handle, puts me totally off.

Jeffrey Tate

#4. I guess, as a conductor, one goes in and out of fashion. Your career starts with a bang, everyone thinks you're wonderful, and then with middle age, something happens and you go into the wilderness.

Jeffrey Tate

#5. People still call me the eternal amateur. After all, professionals are supposed to be able to conduct everything. But I can't unless I feel some connection inside. Conducting is not an end in itself for me.

Jeffrey Tate

#6. I was told when I went for a life-insurance exam when I was 18 that I was not likely to live past 50, so I refused to pay the premium.

Jeffrey Tate

#7. I don't like to hurry. I'm not a conductor of the fast, fiery romantic type. I prefer Bruckner, with the sincerity of his musical language and the huge time spans in which his ideas develop, to Mahler, with his hysteria and self-indulgence.

Jeffrey Tate

#8. So I observe life a little bit, rather than participating in it.

Jeffrey Tate

#9. On the grounds of prestigious musical organizations that come and go, New York has the edge.

Jeffrey Tate

#10. If people had told me that I would have the stamina to conduct 'Ring Cycles,' I would have been amazed. I still am.

Jeffrey Tate

#11. Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg, Berg imply a type of pianist who is intellectual. That's not always associated with female soloists.

Jeffrey Tate

#12. I had a sense of debt to the medical profession and to surgery particularly. I would not be as ambient as I am without it.

Jeffrey Tate

#13. Concert-going has become much less the thing to do, while people are still going to opera. This might be a harsh judgment, but it could easily happen that orchestras could slowly atrophy.

Jeffrey Tate