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There is more openness in LA to possibilities than on the East Coast of America. There is a pioneering spirit there that stems from the reason people went out there in the first place-to find something new.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

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Esa-Pekka Salonen
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: June 30
Composer
Conductor
Helsingfors
Firsts
East
First
Possibility
Something
Went
Pioneering
People
Spirit
Stems
Place
Stem
America
Openness
Reason
Coast
Find
Possibilities

More quotes by Esa-Pekka Salonen

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The philharmonic became such a journey and adventure in my life, and a deeply satisfying thing.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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It would be very tempting to say that why paint because we have Michelangelo, we have Leonardo [Da Vinci], we have all these guys. Why waste your time, because most likely you're not going to be on that level anyway.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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As we watch TV or films, there are no organic transitions, only edits. The idea of A becoming B, rather than A jumping to B, has become foreign.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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I think if you would like to describe composing as an act with one word, slow would be the word.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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There is something very special about this part of the world [U.S], which is the openness and the curiosity and the lack of prejudice and the lack of generally accepted norms as to what art should be and how an artist's career should go and all that.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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I've learned a lot from the masters of orchestration, like Ravel and Stravinsky.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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I always felt that one day I would have to make the change in my own life, bite the bullet and see what it is to be a composer who conducts rather than the other way around.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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Stravinsky is masterly: his harmony is conceived so precisely that it can only be the way it is.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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Of course, if you think of a European or American household in the '50s, so what were the things that when people started climbing up the ladder, what did they buy? A fridge, a TV, I think piano was the number three item in say '53 or '54.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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After 30 years I have realized the greatest pleasure I can get is to have learnt.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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There's so much energy exchange [in conduction], so you get back a lot, of course, but you also have to give a lot. It's kind of high-energy thing.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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When an artist works today or whenever, it's not about creating immortal masterpieces, because that's the one thing we don't decide ourselves.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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I feel that this is my artistic home, and I'm very happy to be a California artist together with many others who are not from here originally but who decided to make this the center of their activities. There's something about that that I find very inspiring and satisfying.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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The players never think they project enough. In a hall that seats 3,300 people, it's a very scary thing to play so quietly that you can barely hear yourself.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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I was starting a group of musicians and we had a group of young composers in Finland back in the '70s, and the real conductors, the professional conductors at the time were not interested in our stuff.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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Of course performing talent, that's clear. Maybe this is not so well-known among young people who are interested in music, who are talented in music, but they're trying to figure out how to go about it.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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I went to work one morning, and outside my door was Cindy Crawford in a black bra, and I thought that very clearly the building is making progress in integrating itself into various layers of our culture.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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I actually don't like this term, classic. It's wrong, but we don't have a better word at the moment.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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We need new art. Old art cannot do that. It can do lots of other things, and of course humanity hasn't changed that much in the last thousand or two thousand years.So that the old Greek dramas are still at the very heart, core, of human experience, but still we need new stuff.
Esa-Pekka Salonen