When I was a kid, three years old, I couldn't walk by the piano without reaching up and trying to play a few notes on it. There are kids who are just drawn to listening to music and dancing to it and trying to conduct.
Michael Tilson ThomasIf you're alive, you have all the experience necessary to understand classical music.
Michael Tilson ThomasThe big difference between human happiness and sadness? Thirty-seven freakin' vibrations.
Michael Tilson ThomasOne of my central maxims is how a major part of what a conductor tries to do is get a large group of people to agree on where "now" actually is.
Michael Tilson ThomasThe real deep text of music and the whole reason that it has continued with the profundity and urgency that it has for over a thousand years, has to do with what the notes say, what the notes witness, different experiences of hope or doubt that people are able to distill and encode and pass on in this way.
Michael Tilson Thomas