Esa-Pekka Salonen
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Esa-Pekka Salonen: ; born June 30, 1958) is a Finnish orchestral conductor and composer. He is currently Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, Conductor Laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Composer-In-Residence at the New York Philharmonic, and Artistic Director and cofounder of the Baltic Sea Festival...
NationalityFinnish
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth30 June 1958
CountryFinland
art drama years
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.
writing years two
Sometimes you spend nine months, 10 months, a year writing a piece that you will hear two years later or something like that, and you never see anybody. It's a very different sort of metabolic.
journey order years
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."
years creative trying
I'm trying to conduct only five months a year, and the rest will be composing time. I'm trying to spend as much as I can out of those months here in L.A., because for creative work, this is a fantastic place.
years pleasure i-can
After 30 years I have realized the greatest pleasure I can get is to have learnt.
play differences years
In the range of music that we play - roughly 300 years' worth-there really are more similarities than differences.
continuity form
This continuity of sound and form was something that I became really interested in from working with Ligeti. He was always going on about how form has to be continuous.
based experience modern odds performance visual
If the seams are showing, there is something wrong with the performance or the construction of the piece. This idea is completely at odds with our modern visual experience, because everything today is based on montage.
functions los people
Los Angeles is just a more open place. The way L.A. functions is that people give you a forum. They say, Show us what you can do.
competition coins position
If I were in a position to announce a public competition to coin a new word, I would do so right now.
classic kind retarded
Our industry [classic music] has kind of retarded into this kind of endless cover-producing thing, and it's a pity.
people trying talent
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.
art careers curiosity
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.
couple attitude moving
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.