Top 100 The Conductor Quotes
#1. The conductor shouts "All aboard!" when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over - and it will be called, and will be, "A melancholy accident.
Henry David Thoreau
#3. I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.
Harriet Tubman
#4. Lately, my mind is like an orchestra. If you don't have the conductor, you don't know what to do. One guy is playing jazz, one guy is playing rock and roll, another classical. It's a big mess.
Goran Ivanisevic
#5. A man gets on a train with his little boy, and gives the conductor only one ticket. 'How old's your kid?' the conductor says, and the father says, 'He's four years old.' 'He looks at least twelve to me,' says the conductor. And the father says, 'Can I help it if he worries?
Robert Benchley
#6. At every moment, each instrument knew what to play. Its little bit. But none could see the whole thing like this, all at once, only its own part. Just like life. Each person was like a line of music, but nobody knew what the symphony sounded like. Only the conductor had the whole score.
Janet Fitch
#7. In this symphony that is my life, God is not content to be a member of the audience or stage crew. He is not even content to be the conductor. He wants to be the composer.
Brad Wilcox
#8. Playing music well is difficult, yet the world has an abundance of fine performers. Explaining a little about music is easier, yet few do it well. Those who can do both supremely form a tiny club, whose honorary chairman is the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.
Justin Davidson
#9. The conductor's stand is not a continent of power, but rather an island of solitude.
Riccardo Muti
#10. I don't feel that the conductor has real power. The orchestra has the power, and every member of it knows instantaneously if you're just beating time.
Itzhak Perlman
#11. So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.
Ruggiero Ricci
#12. ...my life is the train wreck. You, my dear, are the conductor on the Hot Mess Express
B.L. Berry
#13. The conductor is the artistic leader and sometimes cultural arbiter of his or her community. It is their leadership that is looked to and should anything go wrong, they are the persons taking most of the heat.
Leonard Slatkin
#14. I think it's a very important collaboration between the conductor and the orchestra - especially when the conductor is one more member of the orchestra in the way that you are leading, but also respecting, feeling and building the same way for all the players to understand the music.
Gustavo Dudamel
#15. I prefer it when the conductor follows me. It is more difficult to work with a conductor who does not listen - even if I understand that sometimes it makes sense when one person is ruling everything. But for bel canto, I have to have a conductor who listens and supports me.
Anna Netrebko
#16. Great cataclysmic things can go by and neither the orchestra nor the conductor are under the delusion that whether they make this or that gesture is going to be the deciding factor in how it comes out.
James Levine
#17. For me, the most enjoyable type of singing is opera. It allows you to move, to wear a costume ... to do something with your body. When singing in concert, you have to stand up in front of the audience, next to the conductor, which is less natural.
Andrea Bocelli
#18. The singers all loathe the sight of one another, the chorus despises the singers, they both hate the orchestra, and everyone fears the conductor; the staff on one prompt side won't talk to the staff on the opposite prompt side, the dancers are all crazed from hunger in any case ...
Terry Pratchett
#19. The conductor of the orchestra doesn't make a sound. His power comes from awakening possibility in others. - Benjamin Zander, conductor and coauthor of The Art of Possibility
Malcolm Harkins
#20. 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.
Andrea Bocelli
#21. Sympathy wanting, all is wanting; its personal magnetism is the conductor of the sacred spark that lights our atoms, puts us m human communion, and gives us to company, conversation, and ourselves.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#22. Haute couture is like an orchestra, for which only Balenciaga is the conductor. The rest of us are just musicians, following the directions he gives us.
Christian Dior
#23. All the conductor has to do is stand back and try not to get in the way. Mozart is doing all the work.
Colin R. Davis
#24. An air of infinite reluctance M. Poirot climbed aboard the train. The conductor climbed after him.
Agatha Christie
#25. The conductor was eating a young ladies' cinema nibble with a rigid, humourless expression, as though it was the doorstop or hunk of sausage that would have accorded with his personality.
Joseph Roth
#26. I'm a geek and I'm a nerd, and I can listen into any piece of music. I think, I can usually tell you what orchestra it was, I can usually tell you what hall it was in. I can tell you, obviously who the conductor was, and who the composer was.
Hans Zimmer
#27. Gioacchino Rossini, the composer of William Tell and many other operas, had a good grasp of the relationship between music and food: "What love is to the heart, appetite is to the stomach. The stomach is the conductor that leads and livens up the great orchestra of our emotions." If
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#28. I'm a little less hungry as an actor than I used to be. When you're a director, you're the conductor of the orchestra, and when you're an actor, you're playing the violin. There's a thrill to each of them, but as the conductor, you get the fuller sound.
Josh Radnor
#29. I conceived of an instrument that would create sound without using any mechanical energy, like the conductor of an orchestra. The orchestra plays mechanically, using mechanical energy; the conductor just moves his hands, and his movements have an effect on the music artistry.
Leon Theremin
#30. The very first time I was on a car in Atlanta, I saw the conductor - all conductors are white - ask a Negro woman to get up and take a seat farther back in order to make a place for a white man. I have also seen white men requested to leave the Negro section of the car.
Ray Stannard Baker
#31. We are aware that the conductor is not really making the music, it is making him
if he is relaxed, open and attuned, then the invisible will take possession of him; through him, it will reach us.
Peter Brook
#32. Reporters of each channel smudging into each other to get that exclusive sound byte. It looked like BEST bus passengers circling the conductor to buy tickets.
Aditya Magal
#33. You are the conductor of your own attitude! Nobody else can compose your thoughts for you.
Lee J. Colan
#34. In America, they have this nauseating habit of calling the conductor 'maestro'. I always slightly gag when the cor anglais player goes, 'Maestro, can I discuss bar 19 with you?'
Charles Hazlewood
#35. The conductor must breathe life into the score. It is you and you alone who must expose it to the understanding, reveal the hidden jewel to the sun at the most flattering angles.
Charles Munch
#36. A dean is the conductor of an orchestra made up entirely of composers.
Mark William Roche
#37. Love is the foundation, the mechanism and the conductor of life.
Daniel Marques
#38. The symphony orchestra had played poorly, so the conductor was in a bad mood. That night he beat his wife
because the music hadn't been beautiful enough.
George Carlin
#39. The conductor's gift does not always go hand in hand with that of composition; indeed, the union is found much more seldom than is popularly believed.
Anton Seidl
#40. Intent is in the composer, interpretation is in the conductor, rendering is in the instrumentalist, perception is in the listener, sound is in the notes, and rhythm is in the intervals. Music is the harmonious relationship between them all. Relationship is beauty.
Dee Hock
#41. The success of our operas rests most of the time in the hands of the conductor. This person is as necessary as a tenor or a prima donna.
Giuseppe Verdi
#42. Ticket and passport. We're crossing the border."
"Oh. Sorry." Dan handed the conductor his ticket.
"Grazie."
"De nada," Dan said.
"That's Spanish," Amy whispered.
"No, it's whatever," Dan said. "I'm too tired to think.
Jude Watson
#43. There were so many specific things from high school jazz band that I remembered: the conductor searching out people who were out of tune, or stopping and starting me for hours in front of the band as they watched.
Damien Chazelle
#44. You're about to be the conductor on the most brilliant, runaway train in showbiz. Good luck you'll love it.
Dermot O'Leary
#45. The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It's a collaborative adventure.
Nicholas Meyer
#46. An audience is an abstraction; it has no taste. It must depend on the only person who has (pardon, should have), the conductor.
Igor Stravinsky
#47. What love is to the heart, appetite is to the stomach. The stomach is the conductor that leads and livens up the great orchestra of our emotions.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#48. The conductor of an orchestra doesn't make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful.
Benjamin Zander
#49. The greatest contribution jazz has made in music has been to replace the role of the conductor with a member of the ensemble who, instead of waving his arms to keep time and convey mood, is an active member of the musical statement. That person is the drummer.
Elvin Jones
#51. The conductor is a peculiar person. He turns his back on his friends in the audience, shakes a stick at his players in the orchestra, and then wonders why nobody loves him.
Victor Borge
#52. A good conductor ought to be a good chauffeur; the qualities that make the one also make the other. They are concentration, an incessant control of attention, and presence of mind; the conductor only has to add a little sense of music.
Sergei Rachmaninoff
#53. I didn't have traditional stage fright. If there was 500 people in the audience or three people in the audience, it didn't really make a difference. What made a difference was the conductor. Everything that I was scared about as a drummer was him.
Damien Chazelle
#54. It's been a thrilling journey - I have had to really learn that an orchestra is an entity - it's a creature. I have been calling it the dragon and the conductor is the dragon tamer. And you just have to ... ride and don't let go and you will be fine.
Tori Amos
#56. Acting is just playing the violin in an orchestra. Directing is being the conductor.
Jason Bateman
#57. A lot of entrepreneurs let ego get in the way. You've got to be the conductor. You can't play all the instruments yourself. You have to get others to work together.
Bill Rancic
#58. Classic music somehow changed, and it changed between the first and the second world wars, and somehow what happened was that the hero that had been the composer, the hero now was the performer, and especially the conductor.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
#59. Shared leadership ... is less like a an orchestra, where the conductor is always in charge, and more like a jazz band, where leadership is passed around ... depending on what the music demands at the moment and who feels most moved by the spirit to express the music.
Phillip C. Schlechty
#60. The conductor was so totally without expression he could have pulled off a bank robbery without covering his face.
Haruki Murakami
#61. I am still very proud of that concert. In America, the (musicians') connection with the conductor is as with management - it becomes political. You cannot conduct properly in this environment. I hate this enemy situation between management and orchestra members.
Neeme Jarvi
#62. Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.
Igor Stravinsky
#63. The most important thing for the conductor is that he or she listens. Her listening will make things sound a certain way. If the conductor listens well, the musicians listen each other better. The conductor can in effect impose a certain kind of listening for everybody.
Laurence Equilbey
#64. If you ever go to a music session, you'll notice that the musicians can sit down and start playing right away, and everyone knows what to do. Of course they're reading it, but the conductor can tweak little things, and you can take that back to directing motion pictures.
Clint Eastwood
#65. Is it not the business of the conductor to convey to the public in its dramatic form the central idea of a composition; and how can he convey that idea successfully if he does not enter heart and soul into the life of the music and the tale it unfolds?
John Philip Sousa
#66. I might be like a conductor, or I collect the stuff together and I do a lot of my own writing. But what is a pleasure is the whole creative thing in which we're all excavating and trying to find something.
Simon McBurney
#67. A conductor can do wild things which can feel forced, but if you're directing from within the orchestra, you can't do that, things have to feel natural.
Joshua Bell
#68. It's different for people who have not seen a symphony conductor conduct from a chair. I feel very connected to the orchestra in a way that a conductor sometimes does not feel. I think it's more visceral.
Joshua Bell
#69. The principal task of a conductor is not to put himself in evidence but to disappear behind his functions as much as possible. We are pilots, not servants.
Franz Liszt
#70. I can't even touch another conductor's baton. The center of gravity, the feel of the handle, puts me totally off.
Jeffrey Tate
#71. I mean, the great secret is that an orchestra can actually play without a conductor at all. Of course, a great conductor will have a concept and will help them play together and unify them.
Joshua Bell
#72. When I'm having a rehearsal and there are new guys who come in to try out for the job, I always let my conductor rehearse them. Because I don't want the guy to get bent out of shape, because I walk in.
Ray Charles
#73. Only when every one of us and every nation learns the secret of love for all mankind will the world become a great orchestra, following the beat of the Greatest Conductor of all.
Artur Rodzinski
#74. [As a conductor] there has to be, between me and the orchestra, an unshakable bond of trust, born out of mutual respect, through which we can spin a musical narrative that we all believe in.
Charles Hazlewood
#75. In South America, I heard the 8th Symphony of Beethoven. And the young conductor thought, Beethoven must be heroic. But this is piece which shouldn't be heroic. And this was such a misunderstanding, such a deep misunderstanding.
Kurt Masur
#76. You stand exactly in the middle, poised between heaven and earth, a human conductor for the energy that seeks to flow between these two polarities.
Margot Anand
#77. A conductor should reconcile himself to the realization that regardless of his approach or temperament the eventual result is the same-the orchestra will hate him.
Oscar Levant
#78. A great conductor possesses that certain charisma and talent that demand the ears and the attention of an audience. I can't tell you how that happens, but I'm sure it has an inner basis that is never learned.
Isaac Stern
#79. There was that sound again
snap, then a footfall. She tried to whirl around as a dark form
Dear God
sprang with a splash from the darkness
grabbed her from behind, shoved her under the water.
Kaye George
#80. A certain fire pretends to be alive; it awakens. Working its way along the hand as a conductor, it reaches the support and engulfs it; then a leaping spark closes the circle it was to trace, coming back to the eye and beyond.
Paul Klee
#81. If we turn to the divine Conductor and follow the wise and loving baton that is His will, His Word, then the music of our life will be a symphony.
Peter Kreeft
#82. The orchestra confides in me about their music director or their conductor, and I've never seen a conductor that's been liked by everyone.
Joshua Bell
#83. From time to time, the Vienna Philharmonic could play without a conductor because they are so good.
Bernard Arnault
#84. 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.
Joshua Bell
#85. Belief conducts the symphony of our thoughts.
While moments dance to that symphony.
Want better moments?
Choose to be a better conductor.
Charles F. Glassman
#86. In getting good results team leaders become conductor rather than driver, enabling others to play the right music, not by hands-on domination of all decisions and execution, but by providing inspiration, motivation and stimulus.
Robert Heller
#87. The carpenter, lab technician, and conductor are all craftsmen because they are dedicated to good work for its own sake.
Richard Sennett
#88. I told him what I thought and he suddenly leapt into the air with joy, like a child: 'Also, wirklich, gut?' [So it was really good?]. Such a titan, and so unsure of himself.
Sviatoslav Richter
#89. A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist's mind to the viewer's. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist's mind.
Sol LeWitt
#90. Habit is a compromise effected between the individual and his environment, or between the individual and his own organic eccentricities, the guarantee of a dull inviolability, the lightning-conductor of his existence.
Samuel Beckett
#91. A music director cannot and should not be chosen on the basis of a first date. It is not so difficult to make a good impression with a single appearance, usually containing some of a conductor's party pieces, works they have performed successfully many times before.
Leonard Slatkin
#92. Somehow, conductor as this superhuman conduit between the masters and the masterpieces and the immortals.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
#93. conductor of heat, knowing how to control the temperature and to take advantage of its heating properties is vital when you cook with cast iron. This chapter tells you everything that you need to know. Of course, having a few recipes
Tracy L. Barr
#94. A conductor has to know how to translate music into a communicative force that makes the listener want to hear what he has to say.
Isaac Stern
#95. Zeal, the blind conductor of the will.
John Dryden
#96. The whole duty of a conductor is comprised in his ability to indicate the right tempo.
Richard Wagner
#98. As a conductor I find the hardest tasks are to listen to the instinct of a musician and to hear the music behind the notes.
Edward Gardner
#99. 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.
Eberhard Weber
#100. [A conductor's] happiness does not come from only his own story and his joy of the music. The joy is about enabling other people's stories to be heard at the same time.
Itay Talgam
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