I absolutely love the Philharmonic. I also love rock guitar.

The New York Philharmonic is a tremendous opportunity, a great orchestra.

For years, Jazz At The Philharmonic albums were the only ones of their kind.

It is wonderful to see how happy all my friends in the LA Philharmonic are in their new home.

I feel too young in 2018 to take over the Berlin Philharmonic as the successor to Simon Rattle.

From time to time, the Vienna Philharmonic could play without a conductor because they are so good.

I can't imagine Jon Cryer performing with the New York Philharmonic isn't one of the signs of apocalypse.

I miss the standard of the New York Philharmonic's playing very much. It has certainly been a high point in my life.

I'm going to try and make you take the Beatles and Eric Clapton as seriously as the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle.

I have sat in with the Burbank Philharmonic and the Topanga Orchestra when they need someone if someone gets sick or something.

I've been lucky to conduct the very best orchestras in the world: New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Berlin, the London Philharmonic.

The plan was to go Juilliard, graduate, and then go across the street and play in the New York Philharmonic - that was the plan, anyway.

I did a concert... in September with the Berlin Philharmonic... They're great musicians, and there's always something to learn from them.

Open rehearsals reach people who might not otherwise hear the Philharmonic - people on fixed incomes, people who can't move easily at night, students.

I like philharmonic music a lot. That kind of symphonic music has always been an integral part of the arrangements in many of my songs and background scores.

What's happened - in our country, anyhow - is that the young people have shied away from the formality of the concert hall, that tie - and - tails philharmonic image.

There is a mysterious way in which orchestras keep a sense of their history and what they've done. I still listen to the L.A. Philharmonic and feel that Giulini was there.

And to understand this, I think this is a most important point where I would like always to be understood what we do with the New York Philharmonic. That the meaning of the music is number one.

I think I infuse the music with a new passion. Part of this is because I have fallen in love: I am in love with the New York Philharmonic. The chemistry has just been right. Beyond expectation.

Not with the Rochester Philharmonic, but I formed my own orchestra, made up of musicians from the Eastman School, where I'm on the faculty now, direct the Jazz Ensemble and teach improvisation classes.

There was the best teachers from the Czech Philharmonic, highly dedicated people, some of the best musicians in the world passing on the knowledge about the country, about the principles, and about the music.

I remain extraordinarily proud of the Vaughan Williams symphonies I recorded with the LSO, and in the 1980s and '90s, I made an almost complete cycle of orchestral works by Richard Strauss with the Vienna Philharmonic.

As I came to New York, it was for me a new beginning. To discover what people are living here. What do they need, what do they expect, what would they like to be the image and the performance of the New York Philharmonic?

I know Pandit Ravi Shankar was very upset with me, as I did not use his compositions in 'Gandhi.' I thought that the London Philharmonic Orchestra would prove more effective than his music. It was one of my biggest miscalculations.

My life has been going in ways I never could have dreamed of - doing the closing celebration for the Olympic Games and being appointed the creative chair for jazz at the L.A. Philharmonic. So I've just decided I'll go with my flow and be very prepared.

There was an opinion expressed in the newspapers that, after 20 years, maybe the Israel Philharmonic should consider asking me to leave. I thought they might have a point, so I asked my orchestra. They told me overwhelmingly that they wanted me to stay.

Some members of the Vienna Philharmonic convinced me to try Bruckner, which I have never done before. And that was interesting to me to have this experience with this orchestra, which knows the repertoire very well, and to be confronted with this knowledge, and to learn from them.

It seems always to have been difficult to have been a New York Philharmonic conductor because of the nature of New York. We are in direct competition with the great orchestras in the world who come to play in our hall or in Carnegie, and we are constantly compared. I think that 's a good thing.

One of our books has been made into a musical, 'The Great American Mousical,' which I directed at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut. And another, 'Simeon's Gift,' has been adapted for a symphony orchestra and five performers. I'm also a very proud member of the board of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

I listened to classical music. I listened to jazz. I listened to everything. And I started becoming interested in the sounds of jazz. And I went to a concert of Jazz at the Philharmonic when we lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and I saw Charlie Parker play and Billie Holiday sing and Lester Young play, and that did it. I said, 'That's what I want to do.'

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