Word: orchestra
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...rehearsal, his relationship with his orchestra seems more that of a primus inter pares than a Prussian autocrat from the old school. He talks frequently, calling up vivid images to illustrate his interpretative intention. "This is an old fiddler who can hardly pick up his instrument," he says during the rehearsal of a plaintive string passage in Mahler. "And then he gets stronger and stronger, and suddenly it all comes back!" When he's happy with the ways things are going, he lets the band know. "You make the music," he shouts. "I listen to it and adjust...
Although his competition for the job reportedly included such renowned conductors as Christoph Eschenbach, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Marek Janowski, Tilson Thomas was the favorite from the outset. He first guest-conducted the orchestra back in 1974, and over the years had led it more than 100 times. His easy and knowing way with music as disparate as Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, Ravel and Stravinsky ballets, and American music from Charles Ives to Steve Reich also pleased the search committee, as did the fact that Tilson Thomas is an American...
...household. Boyhood piano lessons were followed at the University of Southern California by studies with pianist John Crown and composer-conductor Ingolf Dahl, a summer stint as an assistant at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth in 1966, and an appointment as William Steinberg's assistant at the Boston Symphony Orchestra three years later...
...front ranks of American conductors. His recordings were praised, and the Buffalo Philharmonic named him its musical director in 1971. But a 1978 marijuana bust at Kennedy airport tarnished his reputation, and by the time Tilson Thomas left the U.S. to become principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra in 1987, he had become yesterday's sensation...
...come back to the U.S. in my prime, or at least my majority," he says. "I find myself rediscovering all the love I had for music in the beginning, except that now I have experience as well." He is bursting with ideas, including plans to replace the orchestra's annual June festival with a more adventurous celebration of American music. He is also renotating and recording some of Aaron Copland's thorny early works, as well as continuing work on a major orchestral composition of his own. With his new-found maturity, not to mention a five-year contract...