BMO´s Articles

For 30 years or more, Philip Glass’s music has been criticized for being repetitive, loud, and too accessible. This last quality is his greatest sin in the eyes of academic musicians. As in other fields a sense of elitism adds immeasurably to one’s self-esteem; there’s nothing better than belonging to a club with only a few members. Philip Glass broke up that cozy little club with music which has both depth, and mass appeal.

When I was a student at University of California, Santa Barbara, in the mid-1980s, I had the chance to meet Philip Glass and review a concert he and his ensemble performed on campus. Sorting out some papers recently I stumbled over the review and decided to publish it for the benefit of old and new fans of his work.

Philip Glass, prior to an appearance at UCSB, April 1985

The work which brought him the most fame in recent years is his soundtrack for the film “Koyannisqatsi”. During an interview before the concert he described how he came to write the score.

“Godfrey Reggio first approached me about doing it about three years before the movie was completed. He asked me to do the music and I said I wasn’t interested in doing film music. He said ‘I want you to see how well your music works with these images.’ And I was convinced.”

Although Glass has subsequently written music for an upcoming Paul Schrader film, “Mishima”, he remains dubious about working in film.

“I’d rather work in the field of opera. I find film limiting in a way… there is something very disappointing about doing a final mix. In a way it’s all over. With an opera, we can reinvent it, we can visualize it, we can reinterpret it. With film once it’s done it’s done.”

He and the ensemble still play music from “Koyannisqatsi”, which was originally scored for a full orchestra. This obviously involves the problem of adapting the music so an eight-piece ensemble can reproduce it.

“I have nine synthesizers in the ensemble and we cover string parts and brass parts … it’s amazing, the state-of-the-art is quite extraordinary now. I can make very convincing adaptations.”

The concert on Wednesday bore this out. After seeing “Koyannisqatsi” for the first time only days before, I felt that the power of the work would be reduced without the accompanying images, but I was proved quite wrong; the physical force of the music was stupendous. Amplified to a level not normally associated with classical concerts, his work took on the epic scale which I’d previously associated with Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” or the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, better known as the Olympic hymn.

Fittingly, the piece which showed this most strongly was “the Olympian”, the music Glass composed for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Los Angeles Olympics. Stirring and powerful, this piece exhibited the ensemble’s craft to the fullest. The musicians and the group are forced to use unusual techniques to play Glass’ music, as he explained.

“You just don’t drop into the group and start playing. Any new musical language has to have a new technique… how could it be otherwise? If you are using the old techniques, how could it be new? You have to play rhythmically very accurately and your sense of intonation has to be very defined … those are classic things in a way. However, we’ve rediscovered them. We’re talking about music which is largely polymetric, so that you have to fix your part into a very complex rhythmic scheme that’s going on … and it has to be not just fitted; it has to be very steady. It’s quite different from the kind of modern music where you’ll have different rhythmic things going on all the time, and changing all the time. It’s the steadiness of it that’s the problem.”

The piece which had the greatest effect on me and, it seemed, on the rest of the audience, was “Facades,” one of three sections that the ensemble played from his suite “Glassworks”. Two synthesizers provided a swirling, evocative base for a dialogue between Jon Gibson and Jack Kripl, both playing soprano saxophones. This piece showed the influence of jazz music on Glass’ work, both rhythmically and harmonically. The depth of feeling reached by the sax players equalled anything which mainstream jazz musicians have ever achieved. Much of the evening’s music was powerful, but this was breathtaking.

The evening ended with an unscheduled encore, a storming version of “The Spaceship” from “Einstein on the Beach.” Fantastically powerful, this sent the audience away on a burst of adrenaline. A fitting end to a great show.

You can read more of Tuppy Glossop’s thoughts on music and popular culture at his Web site, AtTheFamilyPlace.com

Keith Lockhart is one of the finest conductors of our generation.

Fifteen years ago, Keith Lockhart became the 20th conductor of the Boston Pops. Boston welcomed him with open arms and warm hearts and reveled in his celebrity status. It seemed that not a day went by without hearing about the handsome, affectuous and single new conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra.

Hearts around Boston broke in unison when Lockhart lost his single status, but it was around that time it seems when things calmed and the respected conductor Keith Lockhart became the revered Maestro Lockhart.

I remember my first Boston Pops concert and seeing the Maestro on stage. I immediately fell in love with his energy! It was exhilarating to watch him conduct the orchestra. He spoke to the audience, he had a great smile, he laughed, he educated us, and he showed us all how much fun it was to spend an evening at Boston’s Symphony Hall!

Fifteen years later, Keith Lockhart has lost neither his enthusiasm nor his sparkle, and it is as enjoyable to watch him today as it was when I first saw him so many years ago.

One of the things I love about his style of conducting is that it makes sense! I can follow along with him as he counts it out, one and two and three and four! I don’t have to guess which body movement belongs to which bar of music. If he points to the tuba, the tuba plays. If he raises his arms wide, the orchestra gets loud! Classical music neophytes don’t sit with their eyes glazed over, wondering how the conductor connects with the musicians. I’ve watched plenty of conductors with their own style, and I sit there confused. But with Keith Lockhart, it all makes sense!

One of Keith Lockhart’s great strengths is his ability to connect with an audience. Through his passion, enthusiasm and charisma, he engages the audience throughout the entire performance. He earns and gains our trust, and we leave feeling like we know the Maestro and can’t wait for whatever he brings next!

His tenure with the Boston Pops has taken him around the world. With the Pops he has recorded a dozen albums, and has conducted approximately 1,300 concerts, and he has been involved with more than 60 television shows with the Pops.

For fifteen years, Keith Lockhart has conducted the Boston Pops, and for the last 11 years, he has concurrently served as the Music Director for the Utah Symphony. Keith Lockhart has a full career and he has been blessed with being able to work with some of the finest musicians in the world.

One of the highlights of the Boston Pops concert season is the 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular. There are two nights of concerts, with the first night a dress rehearsal for the big celebration on the 4th. I had the privilege to interview Maestro Lockhart on July 4th, prior to the evening’s nationally-televised concert. We spoke briefly about the holiday, and then he graciously answered questions ranging from his own piano performances to his belief that music exists to be emotionally compelling!

Interview with Keith Lockhart – July 4, 2009

Betsy: Maestro, I’d like to thank you for the interview. I have a tremendous amount of respect for you and it’s an honor and a privilege to be given this opportunity. Thank you so much.

Maestro Lockhart: I hear you did a nice piece about the Buzz Aldrin concert that we did last month.

Betsy: Thank you! I really loved that performance. It was quite unexpected, and as luck would have it, I got to sit in the front row! Everything came together so perfectly; the “planets” aligned and I couldn’t help but write about it. It was marvelous.

Maestro Lockhart: That’s great! Thank you so much!

Betsy: I have, I think, a week’s worth of questions I could ask you, but it turns out that you answer many of them on a regular basis on KeithLockhart.com! So today I’m tasked with trying to find the best questions I can ask, and fit them into this quick 10-minute interview.

I’d like to start by asking, how do you think last night went?

Maestro Lockhart: Well, there is a reason we have rehearsals. It’s funny, because the last couple of years the rehearsals have gone so smoothly that you get lulled into a false sense of security. But I think people really enjoyed it.

We have a number of things that we need to correct, but that’s how you see them, by getting a chance to do a dry run. It would be very ill advised to try to do a show this big, with this many moving parts, without some sort of a dry run since it’s live television.

I’m glad that we did it, but it was a harder night than I had hoped it would be.

Betsy: For the audience, from our perspective, it was great! We don’t mind the glitches because we’re overjoyed to see it and to experience it all. But I’m sure that from your perspective, those types of things can be tough.

Maestro Lockhart: We look at it from a different perspective because that is what we were supposed to do.

Betsy: Well, it was wonderful evening, and the weather turned out to be perfect – finally, no rain! And thank you so much for doing the 1812! You had said that you wouldn’t be doing the Overture, so it was a wonderful surprise.

Maestro Lockhart: A couple of years ago we started doing the 1812 in the preview show, but in the past years we haven’t done it because of time restrictions on the rehearsal. But TV wanted it and they wanted the chance to get it right a second time, so we put it back in. We got everything except the fireworks!

Betsy: If you weren’t conducting the Pops for the 4^th, where would you like to be?

Maestro Lockhart: Oh, I don’t know. I have worked every 4th of July probably since 1988. So at this point, I have no idea what people do for the 4^th. I think that on a nice day I would be on a nice beach somewhere with a summer drink and sandals on. I probably would not want to join 500,000 people to hear a concert. [laughs]

15 YEARS WITH THE POPS

Betsy: You’ve been with the Boston Popsnow for 15 years. It’s a tremendous milestone. Congratulations! I remember when you came to Boston and you were the talk of the town!

Can you sum up the last 15 years for me? What have been some of the greatest moments for you these past years? What have you been most proud of, and where have you experienced your greatest growth?

Maestro Lockhart: I think with the Pops it’s such an ongoing story. There are certainly moments that stand out with the Pops. Most of them are just the accumulation of work that we’ve done together. I’ve done, I think 1,200 or 1,300 concerts with the organization. I’ve been to Japan and Korea with the Pops, and I think to maybe 34 or 35 states.

All that takes such a huge amount of time and my plate has been so full. Things like the 4^th of July concerts are all wonderful and spectacular. But certainly some of the TV work we’ve done, and the Super Bowl appearance, those are all very memorable.

In terms of growth, I think that actually my greatest growth has been personal rather than professional. When I came to Boston, I was totally unprepared for not only the amount of work that I was going to take on — not just here, but elsewhere over the next couple of years — but I was also unprepared for the amount of pressure and scrutiny the position brings with it.

I think the hardest part was figuring out how to have a life in that context, how to enjoy my life and how to manage the private versus the public parts of my life. And I think I’ve learned a lot about that. It hasn’t always been easy. But I think at the end of the day, life feels much easier and much more pleasant now than it did at the beginning of my tenure, even with all the great work that I still got to do.

Betsy: You earned your music degree in piano performance.Do you still perform?

Maestro Lockhart: I have not played in public for a couple of years now, so, yes, kind of. It’s one of those things that if you don’t have sufficient time to practice you just stop playing. And it’s a vicious cycle because when you start playing again you hate yourself because you don’t play well.

But one of my New Year’s resolutions this year was that I was going to dust it off, because conductors are wise to continue to make music themselves. Otherwise you become one of those people who doesn’t do it themselves, but just tells other people how to do it.

Betsy: So you don’t much play for leisure?

Maestro Lockhart: No, I hardly ever play for leisure. I hardly ever have any leisure! And the last thing I want to do when I have any leisure time is do music.

BECOMING MAESTRO

Betsy: At what point did you know you wanted to be a conductor?

Maestro Lockhart: Oh late in undergraduate school. It was not the kind of thing where I was 8 and wanted to conduct. It was probably when I was around 20 or so.

My music teachers said that I seemed to have a skill set that might be really good for conducting and asked if I’d ever thought about it. I told them that I hadn’t seriously considered it. But then I got to thinking about it seriously and I took some baby steps, and they worked. That was 30 years ago, next year.

Betsy: I think we are all the better for it. You’re a wonderful conductor and so charismatic. I think you bring so much to the world of music and to the public that you don’t see in a lot of conductors. Your personality, you connect with the people.

Maestro Lockhart: It’s really important, in this particular job, because the Boston Pops is all about connecting with people and audiences, and a lot of audiences who are not real classical music fans. So it’s important to be someone they can relate to.

Betsy:Did you ever think you would be conducting one of the most beloved institutions in the world?

Maestro Lockhart: Nope! It never entered my mind! The job had only been held by one other person since Arthur Fiedler’s 50-year tenure beginning in 1930. It would have been a hard job to set your sights on. [John Williams became Conductor in 1980.]

Betsy: What does being the conductor of the Boston Pops mean to you?

Maestro Lockhart: It means that I’m living my dream. It means that I have the opportunity to do what it is that I truly love and as we say in this business, you look around and say, “I actually get paid to do this… this is great!”

You don’t go into classical music for fame or wealth or any of those things. You go into it because it’s what you feel you really have to do. To have gotten to make so much great music with such a great orchestra for so many people, I couldn’t be luckier.

Betsy: I am new to the classical music world. My grandmother played Arthur Fiedler recordings when I was little. But she never passed down her love of classical music to me. And when my parents would listen to classical, I always wanted to hear something ‘else’.

Today, I am like a classical music sponge and I’m trying to soak up all I can. And I owe the inspiration for the love of the music to a very good friend of mine with whom you previously worked in Salt Lake City. I don’t know if you remember him, but his name is Jed Moss and he is a pianist there.

Maestro Lockhart: Yes, I do know him. How do you know Jed?

Betsy: Jed and I have been close friends for about three years.

Maestro Lockhart: Well I had a wonderful ride in Utah. I just wrapped up 11 years with the Utah Symphony as the Music Director in Salt Lake. It’s a great community for music and they have a wonderful orchestra.

Betsy: I read also that as the Emeritus Music Director of the Symphony, you’ll be going back a few times each year.

Maestro Lockhart: Yes, that’s the best part of the job. You get all the fun and not all of the work!

INTERESTING OR COMPELLING?

Betsy: Over the past three years, Jed has opened up so much to me classically, and he has really been my musical guide. He talks to me like I understand everything that he’s saying, which I don’t…

Maestro Lockhart: But you nod appreciatively right, that’s what counts! [laughs]

Betsy: What I do is write down things down and go look them up after our conversation! Through Jed’s recordings, he has introduced me to such a vast range of composers and styles. I have Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Bach, but then there are pieces from artists like Jeff Manookian that, to me, are kind of crazy and ‘unappealing to my ears’. But I can’t help but respect them and listen to them so that I can learn to appreciate the style and period.

Maestro, you’ve been able to mix your styles with your audiences well, but I imagine that some audiences are quite stubborn, and tried and true, and want their more traditional composers and pieces. But in cities like Boston, you probably find audiences that are receptive to more contemporary pieces.

So I am wondering, as a conductor and music director, how do you decide where and when it’s safe to bring a more contemporary piece to an audience?

Maestro Lockhart: Well I think audiences can be made to be receptive in all sorts of situations. There are audiences that don’t know what it is that they would enjoy. They react based on a partial knowledge of a situation and say, “well, I know that I like that person because I’ve heard of them before”.

So my job is to always give them something you know they should hear, not like eating their spinach, but getting them to do it and getting them to trust you and then planning things so that they say, “Oh, I never heard of that before. That was pretty exciting.”

There is always a balance, whether you’re conducting the Boston Pops or the most serious symphonic organization in the world. It’s a balance between entertainment and education. You always have to balance those two elements or you won’t have an audience where people have the entertainment side of the coin. And you won’t be doing your job as a musician if you don’t open their ears and their eyes to the musical world around them.

Betsy: With Contemporary composers that write maybe more avant-garde pieces, where do you see them fitting in today as well as in the future?

Maestro Lockhart: Well, for one thing, there are a whole lot of composers whose works that I don’t do, including Contemporary; because if I can’t find a reason to love a piece of music, I’m not going to force it on someone else.

I don’t think music exists to be intellectually interesting. I think music exists to be emotionally compelling.

So in a Contemporary scene, there are, well, there really isn’t avant-gardeto speak of right now. I think composers by and large turned back and are realizing that it’s their job to connect with an audience, not just to shock or push away an audience.

I’m a big fan of that approach, because I don’t see the point in playing music that leaves people having a negative feeling about what music is for.

Betsy: Thank you so much for speaking with me!

Maestro Lockhart: You’re very welcome.

I’d like to thank the Boston Pops, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the BSO staff for their generosity and for their dedication to bringing the finest music and musicians to Boston. I’d especially like to thank Maestro Keith Lockhart for all that he gives, including making time on the 4th of July to speak with me!

Articles written by Betsy Hijazi can be found at http://www.BetsysView.com.

Discover the phenomenonal complexity of music and reflect on the way it can positively influence your life with this sound collection of riveting quotes…

1. “Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below.”
   – Joseph Addison
2. “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”
   –Maya Angelou
3. “Music is either good or bad, and it’s got to be learned. You got to have balance.”
   – Louis Armstrong
4. “Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
   – Berthold Auerbach
5. “The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.”
   –Johann Sebastian Bach
6. “Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.”
   – Ludwig van Beethoven
7. “Music – The one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.”
   – Ludwig van Beethoven
8. “Music can change the world. ”
   – Ludwig Van Beethoven
9. “Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.”
   – Leonard Bernstein
10. “Music has to breathe and sweat. You have to play it live. ”
    – James Brown
11. “Music is well said to be the speech of angels.”
    – Thomas Carlyle
12. “All music comes from God.”
    – Johnny Cash
13. “If you learn music, you’ll learn most all there is to know. ”
    – Edgar Cayce
14. “Music is nothing separate from me. It is me… You’d have to remove the music surgically. ”
    – Ray Charles
15. “Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is. ”
    – Miles Davis
16. “There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.”
    – George Eliot
17. “You are the music while the music lasts.”
    –T. S. Eliot
18. “We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it. ”
    – Jerry Garcia
19. “Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.”
    – Kahlil Gibran
20. “When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had and never will have.”
    – Edgar Watson Howe
21. “Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossile to be silent.”
    – Victor Hugo
22. “The history of a people is found in its songs.”
    – George Jellinek
23. “Music is the vernacular of the human soul.”
    – Geoffrey Latham
24. “It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.”
    – Walter J. Lippmann
25. “Just as certain selections of music will nourish your physical body and your emotional layer, so other musical works will bring greater health to your mind.”
    – Hal A. Lingerman
26. “Music is the harmonious voice of creation; an echo of the invisible world.”
    – Giuseppe Mazzini
27. “Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don’t take it too seriously.”
    – Henry Miller
28. “I started making music because I could.”
    – Alanis Morissette
29. “Music helps you find the truths you must bring into the rest of your life. ”
    – Alanis Morissette
30. “Music is spiritual. The music business is not. ”
    – Van Morrison
31. “Like everything else in nature, music is a becoming, and it becomes its full self, when its sounds and laws are used by intelligent man for the production of harmony, and so made the vehicle of emotion and thought.”
    – Theodore Mungers
32. “Without music life would be a mistake.”
    – Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
33. “In music the passions enjoy themselves.”
    – Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
34. “Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.”
    – Charlie Parker
35. “Music should be something that makes you gotta move, inside or outside. ”
    – Elvis Presley
36. “It’s the music that kept us all intact, kept us from going crazy. ”
    – Lou Reed
37. “The music business was not safe, but it was FUN. It was like falling in love with a woman you know is bad for you, but you love every minute with her, anyway.”
    – Lionel Richie
38. “Music should never be harmless.”
    – Robbie Robertson
39. “Give me a laundry list and I’ll set it to music.”
    – Gioacchino Antonio Rossini
40. “All music is important if it comes from the heart. ”
    – Carlos Santana
41. “Music is the key to the female heart.”
    – Johann G. Seume
42. “The best music… is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with. ”
    – Bruce Springsteen
43. “All I try to do is write music that feels meaningful to me, that has commitment and passion behind it.”
    – Bruce Springsteen
44. “In music one must think with the heart and feel with the brain.”
    –George Szell
45. “When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.”
    – Henry David Thoreau
46. “For heights and depths no words can reach, music is the soul’s own speech.”
    –Unknown
47. “Most of us go to our grave with our music still inside of us.”
    –Unknown
48. “I believe in the power of music. To me, it isn’t just a fad. This is a positive thing.”
    – Eddie Vedder
49. “Music at its essence is what gives us memories. ”
    – Stevie Wonder
50. “There’s a basic rule which runs through all kinds of music, kind of an unwritten rule. I don’t know what it is. But I’ve got it.”
    – Ron Wood