Word: conductor
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Nary a tympanist, trombonist nor tuba player in the San Diego Youth Symphony complained of not being able to follow the leader. For the guest conductor wielding the baton in three Strauss pieces was 6-ft. 11-in. Bill Walton, who is supposed to be playing roundball crosstown with San Diego's Clippers. Though Walton once tootled an earnest baritone horn in junior high school, his symphony appearance signaled no switch in careers. It simply meant that the Youth Symphony, raising funds for appearances in Europe later this year, recognized that Walton on the podium is as crowd-pleasing...
Joseph Silverstein, concertmaster and assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, led members of the orchestra in a musical tribute to Fiedler, playing works by Bach, Beethoven and Mozart during the service...
...widow, Ellen Bottomley Fielder, and her children attended the service, as did friends and members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) staff. "People from all walks of life, the Boston Symphony, the Pops, the trustees, all the symphony's stage employees, his chauffeur, and ushers were there," Dickson, assistant conductor, said yesterday...
Fiedler's conducting was straightforward and businesslike, a matter of careful reading of a score rather than impassioned urgency. Says Assistant Pops Conductor Harry Ellis Dickson: "He was a very unsentimental sort of guy, and it showed in the music." Yet Fiedler made himself into a national phenomenon. The best-known "serious" musician in America, he was also the bestselling classical artist of all time (over 50 million records). His "Evening at Pops" programs were consistently among the top-rated PBS shows, and one of the high points of America's Bicentennial was a thunderous performance of Tchaikovsky...
...uncles and a first cousin were all members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Fiedler joined the orchestra in 1915 as a violinist. Eager to conduct, the suave young maestro founded a series of free outdoor Esplanade concerts that are now a Boston tradition. In 1930 he was named conductor of the Boston Pops, the symphony's spring series, and proudly held that position for half a century...