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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?

Esa-Pekka Salonen

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Esa-Pekka Salonen
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: June 30
Composer
Conductor
Helsingfors
Would
Sense
Institutions
Wing
Think
Stills
Cutting
Museums
Thinking
Young
Dead
Edge
People
Problem
Sort
Contemporary
Still
Quite
Edges
Persons
Almost
Clearly
Geared
Person
Often
Wings
Portray
Without
Business
Towards
Museum

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Conducting was just something that happened by fluke.
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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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After 30 years I have realized the greatest pleasure I can get is to have learnt.
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I love a visceral sound, the kind that hits you in the belly.
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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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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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Music has just as much to do with movement and body as it does soul and intellect.
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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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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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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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The sort of commercial parameters of classical music changed after the [World War II] , and the whole industry became more backward-looking.
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The classical music industry, has been an industry of covers. So we do covers, and if I compare this with the rock and pop side, what is the most exciting event?
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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.
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Lots of really interesting people move to U.S and decide to work here, because of this whole attitude and openness. I'm absolutely convinced that this is just the beginning. In a couple decades we will see an even more dramatic change.
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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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I'm still disturbed if a chord isn't together, but your priorities change as you get older.
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If somebody had told me when I was starting composition in Helsinki in the '70s that I would end up in L.A. and to describe that journey, those 17 years with the philharmonic and building the hall and this and that, I would have said, This is a fairy tale of the first order.
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The philharmonic became such a journey and adventure in my life, and a deeply satisfying thing.
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