Orchestra Band Quotes

Music is the Universal Language that allows all people to communicate with each other.

Band geeks are the original,” I explain. “Orchestra dorks are simply copying our amazingly uncool status.

It is the sound of the crowd that can be heard in the second, crescendoing rush of the orchestra that follows the final verse, rising from a hum to a gasp to a shout... fusing at last to a shriek (its similarity to the sound of the crowds at Beatle concerts is surely no accident). The onrushing sound of the orchestra at the end of "A Day in the Life" has transcended more than the conventions of Sgt. Pepper's Band. It is the nightmare resolution of the Beatles' show within a show. It is the sound in the eras of the high-wire artist as the ground rushes up from below. There is a blinding flash of silence, then the stunning impact of a tremendous E major piano chord that hangs in the air for a small eternity, slowly fading away, a forty-second meditation on finality that leaves each member if the audience listening with a new kind of attention and awareness to the sound of nothing at all.

it’s not even people anymore, it’s one big thing you want to control and once you’ve had a taste of it, you’re hooked. It’s like if you don’t have it you will die, do you know what I mean? Somebody’s handed you the baton and you can lead this rich, powerful orchestra. Does that make sense to you? I mean after that, leading a five-piece band means nothing, not after you’ve led that orchestra, thousands of people all playing the song just like you want them to.

We humans like to make out we’re in charge of things even when we’re not. A good example is an orchestra conductor. Would the orchestra really not know what to do without the fella waving that stick about? It wouldn’t be so bad if he played the maracas or tambourine whilst he waved the stick but he does nothing. If he got hit by a bus on the way to the gig, would it all have to be cancelled because he wasn’t there? There’s a band called Polyphonic Spree that has over twenty members and they ain’t got a conductor. He’s as unnecessary as the bloke who wears white gloves on the national lottery programme.

Jess Pepper's review of the Avalon Strings: 'In a land so very civilized and modern as ours, it is unpopular to suggest that the mystical isle of Avalon ever truly existed. But I believe I have found proof of it right here in Manhattan. To understand my reasoning, you must recall first that enchanting tale of a mist-enshrouded isle where medieval women--descended from the gods--spawned heroic men. Most notable among these was the young King Arthur. In their most secret confessions, these mystic heroes acknowledged Avalon, and particularly the music of its maidens, as the source of their power. Many a school boy has wept reading of Young King Arthur standing silent on the shore as the magical isle disappears from view, shrouded in mist. The boy longs as Arthur did to leap the bank and pilot his canoe to the distant, singing atoll. To rejoin nymphs who guard in the depths of their water caves the meaning of life. To feel again the power that burns within. But knowledge fades and memory dims, and schoolboys grow up. As the legend goes, the way became unknown to mortal man. Only woman could navigate the treacherous blanket of white that dipped and swirled at the surface of the water. And with its fading went also the music of the fabled isle. Harps and strings that heralded the dawn and incited robed maidens to dance evaporated into the mists of time, and silence ruled. But I tell you, Kind Reader, that the music of Avalon lives. The spirit that enchanted knights in chain mail long eons ago is reborn in our fair city, in our own small band of fair maids who tap that legendary spirit to make music as the Avalon Strings. Theirs is no common gift. Theirs is no ordinary sound. It is driven by a fire from within, borne on fingers bloodied by repetition. Minds tormented by a thirst for perfection. And most startling of all is the voice that rises above, the stunning virtuoso whose example leads her small company to higher planes. Could any other collection of musicians achieve the heights of this illustrious few? I think not. I believe, Friends of the City, that when we witnes their performance, as we may almost nightly at the Warwick Hotel, we witness history's gift to this moment in time. And for a few brief moments in the presence of these maids, we witness the fiery spirit that endured and escaped the obliterating mists of Avalon.

Chickie Pete and his trumpet. He might have played professionally, why not? A session man in a funk band, or an orchestra. If things had been different. The boys could have been many things had they not been ruined by that place. Doctors who cure diseases or perform brain surgery, inventing shit that saves lives. Run for president. All those lost geniuses—sure not all of them were geniuses, Chickie Pete for example was not solving special relativity—but they had been denied even the simple pleasure of being ordinary. Hobbled and handicapped before the race even began, never figuring out how to be normal. The tablecloths were new

Some nights, sitting among ferns far from the garden, watching headlights creep down 101 in the distance, he clamps his palms over his ears and tries to imagine what it must be like. He shuts his eyes, tries to quiet himself. For a moment he thinks he has it; a kind of void, a nothingness, an oblivion. But it doesn't--it cannot--last; there is always noise, the flux and murmur of his body's machinery, a hum in his head. His heart beats and flexes in its cage. His body, in those moments, sounds to him like an orchestra, a rock band, an entire prison of inmates crowded into one cell. What must it be like not to hear that? To never know even the whisper of your own pulse?

One athlete does not make a team. One singer does not make a band. One actor does not make an ensemble. One participant does not make a contest. One employee does not make a company. One stroke does not make a portrait. One word does not make an essay. One paragraph does not make a thesis. One note does not make a symphony. One instrument does not make an orchestra. One finger does not make a hand. One toe does not make a foot. One lip does not make a voice. One member does not make a body. One cell does not make a being. One memory does not make an experience. One habit does not make a character. One act does not make a destiny. One day does not make a year. One moment does not make a lifetime. One man does not make a family. One home does not make a neighborhood. One clan does not make nation. One tribe does not make a continent. One people does not make a world.

My 1979 Top 40 In no particular order, this is the forty-track rotation I listened to when I was researching, prepping and writing 1979. They were all released in the late 1970s, though not all in 1979 itself. But then, like Allie, we all listen to tunes from our past . . . I hope it gets you in the mood for reading! ‘Picture This’ – Blondie ‘Lovely Day’ – Bill Withers ‘Automatic Lover’ – Dee D. Jackson ‘Brass in Pocket’ – The Pretenders ‘It’s a Heartache’ – Bonnie Tyler ‘Wild West Hero’ – Electric Light Orchestra ‘Because the Night’ – Patti Smith ‘Into the Valley’ – The Skids ‘YMCA’ – Village People ‘Like Clockwork’ – Boomtown Rats ‘Stayin’ Alive’ – Bee Gees ‘Uptown Top Ranking’ – Althea & Donna ‘No More Heroes’ – The Stranglers ‘Take a Chance on Me’ – Abba ‘Werewolves of London’ – Warren Zevon ‘Psycho Killer’ – Talking Heads ‘Kiss You All Over’ – Exile ‘Top of the Pops’ – Rezillos ‘Heroes’ – David Bowie ‘Don’t Hang Up’ – 10cc ‘English Civil War’ – The Clash ‘2-4-6-8-Motorway’ – Tom Robinson Band ‘Rebel Rebel’ – David Bowie ‘Glad to be Gay’ – Tom Robinson Band

symphony isn’t what you’re going for. Leave the conductor and the sheet music behind. Build a jazz band instead. Jazz emphasizes individual spontaneity. The musicians know the overall structure of the song but have the freedom to improvise, riffing off one another other, creating incredible music. Of course, you can’t just remove the rules and processes, tell your team to be a jazz band, and expect it to be so. Without the right conditions, chaos will ensue. But now, after reading this book, you have a map. Once you begin to hear the music, keep focused. Culture isn’t something you can build up and then ignore. At Netflix, we are constantly debating our culture and expecting it will continually evolve. To build a team that is innovative, fast, and flexible, keep things a little bit loose. Welcome constant change. Operate a little closer toward the edge of chaos. Don’t provide a musical score and build a symphonic orchestra. Work on creating those jazz conditions and hire the type of employees who long to be part of an improvisational band. When it all comes together, the music is beautiful.

Dear Peter K, First of all I refuse to call you Kavinsky. You think you’re so cool, going by your last name all of a sudden. Just so you know, Kavinsky sounds like the name of an old man with a long white beard. Did you know that when you kissed me, I would come to love you? Sometimes I think yes. Definitely yes. You know why? Because you think EVERYONE loves you, Peter. That’s what I hate about you. Because everyone does love you. Including me. I did. Not anymore. Here are all your worst qualities: You burp and you don’t say excuse me. You just assume everyone else will find it charming. And if they don’t, who cares, right? Wrong! You do care. You care a lot about what people think of you. You always take the last piece of pizza. You never ask if anyone else wants it. That’s rude. You’re so good at everything. Too good. You could’ve given other guys a chance to be good, but you never did. You kissed me for no reason. Even though I knew you liked Gen, and you knew you liked Gen, and Gen knew you liked Gen. But you still did it. Just because you could. I really want to know: Why would you do that to me? My first kiss was supposed to be something special. I’ve read about it, what it’s supposed to feel like00fireworks and lightning bolts and the sound of waves crashing in your ears. I didn’t have any of that. Thanks to you it was as unspecial as a kiss could be. The worst part of it is, that stupid nothing kiss is what made me start liking you. I never did before. I never even thought about you before. Gen has always said that you are the best-looking boy in our grade, and I agreed, because sure, you are. But I still didn’t see the allure of you. Plenty of people are good-looking. That doesn’t make them interesting or intriguing or cool. Maybe that’s why you kissed me. To do mind control on me, to make me see you that way. It worked. Your little trick worked. From then on, I saw you. Up close, your face wasn’t so much handsome as beautiful. How many beautiful boys have you ever seen? For me it was just one. You. I think it’s a lot to do with your lashes. You have really long lashes. Unfairly long. Even though you don’t deserve it, fine, I’ll go into all the things I like(d) about you: One time in science, nobody wanted to be partners with Jeffrey Suttleman because he has BO, and you volunteered like it was no big deal. Suddenly everybody thought Jeffrey wasn’t so bad. You’re still in chorus, even though all the other boys take band and orchestra now. You even sing solos. And you dance, and you’re not embarrassed. You were the last boy to get tall. And now you’re the tallest, but it’s like you earned it. Also, when you were short, no one even cared that you were short--the girls still liked you and the boys still picked you first for basketball in gym. After you kissed me, I liked you for the rest of seventh grade and most of eighth. It hasn’t been easy, watching you with Gen, holding hands and making out at the bus stop. You probably make her feel very special. Because that’s your talent, right? You’re good at making people feel special. Do you know what it’s like to like someone so much you can’t stand it and know that they’ll never feel the same way? Probably not. People like you don’t have to suffer through those kinds of things. It was easier after Gen moved and we stopped being friends. At least then I didn’t have to hear about it. And now that the year is almost over, I know for sure that I am also over you. I’m immune to you now, Peter. I’m really proud to say that I’m the only girl in this school who has been immunized to the charms of Peter Kavinsky. All because I had a really bad dose of you in seventh grade and most of eighth. Now I never ever have to worry about catching you again. What a relief! I bet if I did ever kiss you again, I would definitely catch something, and it wouldn’t be love. It would be an STD! Lara Jean Song

The bassoon is absurd... it takes like an hour to assemble one. They're enormous and are made of Lincoln Logs, aluminum twigs, and paper towel tubes. There are these tiny double wooden reeds that you have to soak and trim and tend to all the time. There's a strap that you actually have to sit on when you play so the whole thing doesn't fall on the floor like a bundle of garbage.

This country has no indigenous art that requires this level of skill. When classical music is transposed to our society we understand its purpose to be playing in a band or orchestra and we equate its complexity and sophistication to jazz. This is at best naive, at worst a perversion. A

The tape had not been rewound fully and the room filled immediately with music. Lauren Adler, celebrated cello soloist and Elodie’s mother, was in close-up on the screen. She hadn’t started yet, but was embracing the cello, its neck entwined with her own as the orchestra played behind her. She was very young in this video. Her chin was lifted, her eyes fixed on the conductor; long hair cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. She was waiting. The stage lights illuminated one side of her face, throwing the other into dramatic shadow. She was wearing a black satin dress with spaghetti straps, and her fine arms—deceptively strong—were bare. She wore no jewelry except for her simple gold wedding band; her fingers, resting on the strings, were poised, ready. The conductor was on-screen now, a man in a white bowtie and black jacket. He brought the orchestra to a pause and, after a few seconds of silence, nodded at Lauren Adler. She drew breath and then she and her cello began their dance. Amongst

With a historian’s eye, Archibald Gracie attempted to separate truth from fantasy as he listened to the survivors’ stories, a potential book beginning to form in his mind. Second Officer Lightoller and Third Officer Pitman regularly stopped by the small cabin Gracie shared with Hugh Woolner to discuss various aspects of the disaster. All agreed that the explosions heard during the sinking could not have been the ship’s boilers blowing up. From the discovery of the severed wreck in 1985 we now know that the “explosions” were actually the sound of the ship being wrenched apart. But Gracie and Lightoller firmly believed that the ship had sunk intact—a view that would become the prevailing opinion for the next seventy-three years. Gracie thought that Norris Williams and Jack Thayer, “the two young men cited as authority … of the break-in-two theory,” had confused the falling funnel for the ship breaking apart. But both Williams and Thayer knew exactly what they had seen, as did some other eyewitnesses. On the Carpathia, Jack Thayer described the stages of the ship’s sinking and breaking apart to Lewis Skidmore, a Brooklyn art teacher, who drew sketches that were later featured in many newspapers. The inaccuracies in Skidmore’s drawings, however, only bolstered the belief that the ship had, in fact, sunk intact. And what of the most famous Titanic legend of all—that the band played “Nearer My God to Thee” as the ship neared its end? It’s often claimed that this was a myth that took hold among survivors on the Carpathia and captivated the public in the aftermath of the disaster. None of the musicians survived to confirm or deny the story, but Harold Bride noted that the last tune he heard being played as he left the wireless cabin was “Autumn.” For a time this was believed to be a hymn tune by that name, but Walter Lord proposed in The Night Lives On that Bride must have been referring to “Songe d’Automne,” a popular waltz by Archibald Joyce that is listed in White Star music booklets of the period. Historian George Behe, however, has carefully studied the survivor accounts regarding the music that was heard during the sinking and has found credible evidence that “Nearer My God to Thee” and perhaps other hymns were played toward the end. Behe also recounts that the orchestra’s leader, Wallace Hartley, was once asked by a friend what he would do if he ever found himself on a sinking ship. Hartley replied, “I don’t think I could do better than play ‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past’ or ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’ ” The legendary hymn may not have been the very last tune played on the Titanic but it seems possible that it was heard on the sloping deck that night.

The theme of music making the dancer dance turns up everywhere in Astaire’s work. It is his most fundamental creative impulse. Following this theme also helps connect Astaire to trends in popular music and jazz, highlighting his desire to meet the changing tastes of his audience. His comic partner dance with Marjorie Reynolds to the Irving Berlin song “I Can’t Tell a Lie” in Holiday Inn (1942) provides a revealing example. Performed in eighteenth-century costumes and wigs for a Washington’s birthday–themed floor show, the dance is built around abrupt musical shifts between the light classical sound of flute, strings, and harpsichord and four contrasting popular music styles played on the soundtrack by Bob Crosby and His Orchestra, a popular dance band. Moderate swing, a bluesy trumpet shuffle, hot flag-waving swing, and the Conga take turns interrupting what would have been a graceful, if effete, gavotte. The script supervisor heard these contrasts on the set during filming to playback. In her notes, she used commonplace musical terms to describe the action: “going through routine to La Conga music, then music changing back and forth from minuet to jazz—cutting as he holds her hand and she whirls doing minuet.”13 Astaire and Reynolds play professional dancers who are expected to respond correctly and instantaneously to the musical cues being given by the band. In an era when variety was a hallmark of popular music, different dance rhythms and tempos cued different dances. Competency on the dance floor meant a working knowledge of different dance styles and the ability to match these moves to the shifting musical program of the bands that played in ballrooms large and small. The constant stylistic shifts in “I Can’t Tell a Lie” are all to the popular music point. The joke isn’t only that the classical-sounding music that matches the couple’s costumes keeps being interrupted by pop sounds; it’s that the interruptions reference real varieties of popular music heard everywhere outside the movie theaters where Holiday Inn first played to capacity audiences. The routine runs through a veritable catalog of popular dance music circa 1942. The brief bit of Conga was a particularly poignant joke at the time. A huge hit in the late 1930s, the Conga during the war became an invitation to controlled mayhem, a crazy release of energy in a time of crisis when the dance floor was an important place of escape. A regular feature at servicemen’s canteens, the Conga was an old novelty dance everybody knew, so its intrusion into “I Can’t Tell a Lie” can perhaps be imagined as something like hearing the mid-1990s hit “Macarena” after the 2001 terrorist attacks—old party music echoing from a less complicated time.14 If today we miss these finer points, in 1942 audiences—who flocked to this movie—certainly got them all. “I Can’t Tell a Lie” was funnier then, and for specifically musical reasons that had everything to do with the larger world of popular music and dance. As subsequent chapters will demonstrate, many such musical jokes or references can be recovered by listening to Astaire’s films in the context of the popular music marketplace.

The reception tent was rigged with a custom lighting system that projected twinkling constellations in an evening sky. Every table had a massive floral centerpiece draped in lush white flowers and dripping with crystals. The china, crystal, and sterling silver were brought in from England. Fun fact: just one sterling place setting cost roughly $800. The gilded custom stage for the orchestra-style band would have been suited to a Roaring Twenties New York City ballroom. Ornamental bushes dotted the room, trimmed to resemble the constellations brought to life, from the Hunter to the Big Dipper. However, the crown jewel was the head table, a round mirrored table underneath a huge hanging ring of white orchids, peonies, and crystals---and in front of a solid wall of five thousand white roses and ranunculus. The sight was truly breathtaking.

By 1982, the synth had become so pervasive that it became the subject of a dispute initiated by the central London branch of the Musicians’ Union. When Barry Manilow toured the UK in January, he used synths to simulate the orchestral sounds of a big band, after which the union passed a motion to ban the use of synths, drum machines and any electronic devices ‘capable of recreating the sounds of conventional musical instruments’. They were particularly concerned about the possible effect on West End theatrical productions, imagining orchestra pits full of ‘technicians’ instead of musicians.

What has never been absolutely certain is how many of the eight musicians were involved in this exercise, as they’d previously worked as two separate groups with different repertoires. If they combined, what did the two pianists, Percy Taylor and Theo Brailey, play after they were out on the Boat Deck itself? It seems unlikely that they would have hauled a piano onto the deck of a sinking ship. Others have questioned the ability of the cellists to remain in place once the ship listed beyond a certain degree because cellists need to be firmly seated. The survivors mostly referred to “the band” or “the ship’s orchestra” without enumerating them.

Whether or not they had traveled down to Southampton on the boat train that arrived early in the morning of April 10, the musicians would have joined the crowd of second-and third-class passengers streaming toward berths 43/44 of the White Star’s dock, where the majestic Titanic lay with its bow pointed at the Solent. They would have boarded by the second-class entrance on C Deck, toward the back of the ship, and taken the elevator or staircase two flights down to E Deck, where there was a designated musicians’ room on the starboard side with three sets of bunk beds, drawers, a wardrobe, a basin, and a separate cabin in which to store their instruments. A second room, again for 5 musicians was on the port side, squeezed between a room for washing potatoes, and accomodation for its workers. It’s likely that the ‘saloon orchestra’ took the better cabin.1

the unfolding waves of sound are like an underwater orchestra or the endless improvisation of a jazz band. On the Great Barrier Reef, the humpback whales sing the soprano melody. Fish supply the chorus: whooping clownfish, grunting cod, and crunching parrotfish. Sea urchins scrape, resonating like tubas. Percussion is the domain of chattering dolphins and clacking shrimp, who use their pincers to create bubbles that explode with a loud bang. Lobsters rasp their antennae on their shells like washboards. Rainfall, wind, and waves provide the backbeat. To get the best seat, you would have to attend the concert in the middle of the night at the full moon, when fish chorusing typically crests. But you wouldn't necessarily need to have a front row seat: mass fish choruses can be heard up to 50 miles away, and whale sounds resonate for hundreds of miles.

Hank was happy to cash the checks as the palm court orchestras played his songs, but on a far deeper level he was suspicious of the trend, seeing it as a dilution of his music. “These pop bands,” he told an interviewer in Charleston, South Carolina, “will play our hillbilly songs when they cain’t eat any other way.

The judge drummed with his fingers on his desk but the band of toes still wouldn’t let him in yet. Though he didn’t want to be in that special orchestra where a practical joker was known to put water and a powdered fruity dessert mix in large stringed instruments of which the stunt was known as cello Jello.

Don't provide a musical score and build a symphonic orchestra. Work on creating those jazz conditions and hire the type of employees who long to be part of an improvisational band. When it all comes together, the music is beautiful.

I was born into the wrong generation. How I would have loved to have been a dashing young man in the 1930s and 1940s when dance bands and orchestras played at dancehalls, and you could hold your partner close and whisper sweet nothings as you waltzed into her heart.

She retired early and, consequently, was in ignorance of the receipt of a telegram by Sylvanus Starr announcing the return of Andy P. Symes and the complete success of his eastern mission. So when she was awakened the next morning by a conflict of sounds which resembled the efforts of a Chinese orchestra and raised the shade to see the newly organized Cowboy band making superhuman endeavors to march and yet produce a sufficiently correct number of notes from the score of "A Hot Time in the Old Town" to make that American warcry recognizable, she knew that something unusual had developed in the interim of her long sleep. It

Arrogance: that featured among Philip's colleagues, too, though that was more a matter of mien than anything else. If there was one subject about which they tended to be cavalier, it was the ease of doing anything in life besides physics. They were quick to let you know that, in addition to practicing that best and most worthy of all the sciences, they were, as Philip said about himself, "intrinsically multidisciplinary": they'd casually mention that they'd just cycled their first century, or were doing a show with a local band, or were nearly finished with building a kiln. It was as if the stereotype of the physicist as a bespectacled dweeb was something they felt it was their duty and obligation to strive against. And though they never seemed to be quite as skilled at their extracurricular activities as their pride in them might have indicated, if they were perhaps unlikely to play in professional orchestras or chalk up record-beating times in marathons, then it was even more unlikely that top-level violinists and athletes were doing science on the side, as a hobby. Rebecca was never sure whether there was something about physics as an occupation that made it a magnet for the arrogant, or whether the process of becoming acclimated to the culture of physics involved developing a certain conceit about oneself if one was to succeed, but either way she got the impression that arrogance was often a benefit to physicists, rather than a liability.

The first breath a choir, orchestra or band takes together, a breath filled with focus, intention and emotion, a breath unified for no other reason than to make something beautiful together...that is the reason we do what we do.

For my mother, the experience was emotional. When my music was evolving, I hadn’t allowed her to hear it. For years up on Cloverdale, I had always locked myself in my room, not letting anybody hear what I was doing. Then, after I moved out, I never invited her to hear me working in the studios. So, when Let Love Rule was released, she was completely shocked. She could hear how everything that I had experienced on my journey came alive in that album: Tchaikovsky; the Jackson 5; James Brown; the Harlem School of the Arts; Stevie Wonder; Gladys Knight and the Pips; Earth, Wind & Fire; Miles Davis; Jimi Hendrix; Led Zeppelin; KISS; the California Boys’ Choir; Prince; David Bowie; Miss Beasley’s orchestra; the Beverly Hills High jazz band; the magical spark between me and Lisa; the spirit of our daughter. More than anyone, Mom knew that I had poured every aspect of my life into this effort. That was enough to make her proud. But what blindsided her—and me as well—was the sight of thousands of fans singing lyrics that I had written—and most of those fans didn’t even speak English.