Pop music, which I deeply admire and wish I could play better than I can, is based on expressing one mood, one feeling at a time. Classical music is by its very nature involved with different kinds of music, constantly transforming one another, which is more akin to the way our experience of life really is.
Michael Tilson ThomasIt's easier to interest a conservative audience in pushing the musical boundaries than to involve a young audience used to very noisy, assertive music in something like Schubert or Bach because the further back you go, the less bells and whistles there are.
Michael Tilson ThomasIf you're alive, you have all the experience necessary to understand classical music.
Michael Tilson ThomasBut those musics do not address the larger kind of architecture in time that classical music does, whatever each one of us knows that classical music must mean.
Michael Tilson ThomasThey are representations of many shared hours of collaboration between us all. That's the real nature of the relationship the orchestra and I are trying to build.
Michael Tilson Thomas