An HBO Documentary Featuring the Career of Legendary Filmmaker Steven Spielberg
Interview: Susan Tomes, Pianist & Writer
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
For me, the most important thing to impart to students is that great music is not ‘entertainment’, nor just a social accomplishment, but a reflection of life. Most of the music I care about is a metaphor for life, of its complexity (and sometimes its simplicity). Great composers have found a way of channelling their thoughts and life experiences into music, in such a way that the rest of us can receive a kind of ‘distilled understanding’ through the music. Once a young musician has grasped this point, working on music becomes much more than a surface task, and they can begin a huge journey of exploration.
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Musician Taryn Southern Is Composing Her New Album with Artificial Intelligence
Ron Cephas Jones on ‘This Is Us’
Jones believes that the foundation of the character came from the writing, and his performance helped strengthen the material. He says, “I trusted that Dan [Fogelman] was going to take that character in a direction that was going to be layered, and deeper than what’s on the surface of it. I also knew that as an actor, I could bring something that was deeper and layered, and I think it worked both ways. When they saw that, they realized they could also be deeper and have more layers, because I understood how to carry those layers, and where they came from. There are nuances in the character of William that are directly pulled from my life, and my life experience. They’re very subtle and small little moments—detail-y things that happen—but there was room for that, so I didn’t have to worry about that. It wasn’t a cliché role, right from the beginning. You might think it would be, but it turned out that it was fuller than I could even imagine.”
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Hear Mozart’s First Composition When He Was Only Five Years Old
Interview: Andrew Constantine, Composer
How exactly do you communicate your ideas about a work to the orchestra?
I never enjoy hearing people talk too much about music, other than in the most general of terms. I find it a largely pointless exercise that detracts from the players’ capacity to use their own imaginations. If I can convey a telling visual image or emotional idea as succinctly as possible I think that is the way to do it. And then of course, there’s what you do with your hands. A great deal of it is intuitive but I shall be forever grateful to my teacher Ilya Musin for opening my eyes to the fundamental importance of meaningful gesture.
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Stillness
