Zander on Music and Passion
Benjaim Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, has become a hot ticket on the corporate leadership circuit. Here’s why:
4 thoughts on “Zander on Music and Passion”
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Sequenza21
The Original New Music Community
One-buttock? I have always been a half-assed performer 🙂
I was part of Ben Zander’s first audience when I was a teenager in his NEC Youth Chamber Orchestra. We believed everything he said. I have followed his career through his attempts to get corporate people to communicate with one another musically, through his book about optimism (something he has on tap), and through his career as a conductor.
Isn’t it funny that his intended audience for this is made of the non musical people who would have been my peers in the 1970s? We have aged, yet he has not.
Yes, it was brilliant, which makes the missed opportunity all the more poignant. Leaping from the known into the unknown (Mozart to Chopin) works for some people, so why not make that work for everyone? Maybe not Feldman, but any number of piano pieces for the past decade would have made a leap for the entire crowd. Instead, he pivoted it on the few who might know that prelude, and the associations he could draw. Time was short, of course, but he could actually have met his own “flying over the fences” vision. He stopped quite a few pastures short of the tree.
Dennis
I love it! Although, I must admit, I was waiting for a transition from the example of falling asleep to Chopin to waking up to Feldman….. Perhaps that occurs later, but kudos to Zander. (My only critique is: In his effort to further corporate America, someone should attach a microphone to the piano and turn down the headset during his performances).