The role of an orchestra in the 21st century isn't just playing, it's about developing future audiences and performers.

I have been long associated with British music. I have favoured it as my alternate music next to American.

I don't really think about retiring. I will retire just before people start saying, 'I knew Leonard Slatkin when he conducted well.

The convergence of the Rhone and Saone. Paul Bocuse. The birthplace of cinema. Chateauneuf-du-Pape just a few miles down the road. It does not get much better than Lyon.

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.

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.

I'm not particularly lucid after a concert. I'm not very lucid before, either.