Gunther Schuller
Gunther Schuller
Gunther Alexander Schuller was an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian and jazz musician...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth22 November 1925
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
coming deep exactly music stream third together trying
So it was exactly as Third Stream implies: coming together in very profound, important deep ways, trying to make a new music out of this amalgam.
cincinnati listening night rehearsing slept symphony
So, I think I never slept because during the day I was rehearsing with the Cincinnati Symphony and at night I was listening to jazz.
duke great happened met musicians simply time
What happened in Cincinnati, is I actually met Duke Ellington and many of the great musicians of that time simply by my going to all these nightclubs.
gonna good heaven means money though wherever
You know, I'm not gonna take my money with me to heaven or hell, wherever I'm going. So I want to do something good with it even though my means are very limited. I'm no millionaire!
less musical york
That was more or less coincidental in the sense that my parents wanted me to come back to New York because that's the center of musical activity still to this day, more or less, and so I auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera.
adjunct companies composers debut money record recorded touch
The record company started as an adjunct to that, to give young composers their first recorded performances; to give young musicians their first debut on a recording. These are all things that big record companies would never touch because there is no money in it!
alone amateur became felt suddenly until
But somehow, I felt no inclination to be interested in it in any amateur way, let alone professional, until suddenly I became interested. And the first thing I did was to compose: not play an instrument, but to compose.
I would like to read some books: I don't have time; I would like to continue working on my autobiography.
city forty orchestra scrape thirty thousand twenty york
So now, thirty years, forty years later, I mean, I could find a whole orchestra of a thousand to put these things together in New York City alone. In those days, if I could scrape up twenty musicians to do this it was something extraordinary.
develop sort
Because I have sixty years of being a professional composer, conductor, musician, whatever, and you develop a lot of friendships and you get involved with a lot of sort of long-term commitments and obligations.
life music work
Well, because music is my life and music is not work for me.
priorities age calling
My primary calling, I always knew since the age of 11, was as a composer, and so that had to take priority.
years musical orchestra
I was playing in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra as principal horn. I was there for some 15 years - one of the most exciting and great musical periods in my life.
artist musical age
I wanted to be an artist, but at age 11, somehow all this musical knowledge and information and love for music that I had came out, and then suddenly it was very clear that I wanted to be a musician of some sort.