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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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Esa-Pekka Salonen
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: June 30
Composer
Conductor
Helsingfors
Describe
Slow
Word
Would
Think
Thinking
Like
Composing

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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.
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The philharmonic became such a journey and adventure in my life, and a deeply satisfying thing.
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I don't believe in an annual dose of film music for the sake of it being film music. If we program film music, it will be because there is a real artistic reason for doing so.
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I think we are in the process of getting the word out, and we haven't done very well yet. But we are trying.
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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.
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There was this kind of mildly annoying mythology about conductor Like biker should riding a Harley-Davidson on an LP cover, and wearing a sort of a leather suit.
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In Europe, there is so much tradition, and everyone has established ideas as to what art should be and what it has always been.
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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.
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I think we still do have a PR problem in the sense that these institutions portray themselves quite often as a museum without the contemporary wing. For a young cutting-edge person, why would you get into that sort of business, which is very clearly geared towards dead or almost dead people?
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The Royal Festival Hall in London is nice people hang out there. I think this inviting, non-exclusive character is very important.
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Music has just as much to do with movement and body as it does soul and intellect.
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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.
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Conducting was just something that happened by fluke.
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My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.
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We're not talking about an elite art form from the price point of view. We have a building in L.A. that is incredibly open, exciting, inviting, and all that, and there's no reason for this music not to be part of everybody's everyday life.
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I've learned a lot from the masters of orchestration, like Ravel and Stravinsky.
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After 30 years I have realized the greatest pleasure I can get is to have learnt.
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The underlying process in Northern music tends to be slower and continuous, whatever's happening on the surface in Southern music the underlying process is always faster.
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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.
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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.
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