Word: baton
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Chandler could be elected mayor of Los Angeles at the drop of a baton. But just now she's much too busy getting done the things that no mere mayor could...
Jack went back to the music, jabbing his baton at a singer who had lost the tempo and nodding and smiling as friends came into the dining room to see how Mozart was faring. The atmosphere was extremely friendly and informal, rather more like a rehearsal for a children's recital than for a grand opera whose cast had to practice its lines and blocking and learn to keep in tempo by opening nights, now only four days away...
...thick-chested, Scherchen on the podium was a study in the fine art of conducting technique. He held the orchestra in tight rein with an economy of direction, each hand working independently with machinelike precision. In climactic passages he carved the air with jabbing, slashing strokes of his baton while his left hand "danced like a bird caught in a storm. At other times he seemingly stared the musicians through their paces, intermittently striking cues with the suddenness of a judo chop...
...learning his technique. He never takes more than four at a time. They travel everywhere with "Herr Doktor," as they reverently call him, taking lessons at intermissions, in taxis and restaurants. Scherchen, who at eleven knew all of Beethoven's music by heart, insists that before taking baton in hand, a student must have the score indelibly branded on his memory. Then the gestures will follow naturally...
...Jazzman Al Hint, 41. He had cut a disk with the Boston Pops in Symphony Hall, so this time it was Conductor Arthur Fiedler, 69, guesting it high on the revolving stage of Hirt's Bourbon Street hangout. "Where are the other 90 musicians?" Fiedler began, raising his baton, whereupon the six-man combo beat him to the beat by hurtling into Trumpeter's Lullaby. "We only have one rule," Al explained kindly. "The one who finishes first gets to play the ending." Since Fiedler had never really started in the first place, he made the grand finale...