Michael Tilson Thomas

"But those musics do not address the larger kind of architecture in time that classical music does, whatever each one of us knows that classical music must mean."

"But if I can be convinced and then through the work that we do together, the orchestra can really be convinced of the big sweep of that communication that the piece suggests, then the audience will get it and it will be a good experience for all of us."

"They are representations of many shared hours of collaboration between us all. That's the real nature of the relationship the orchestra and I are trying to build."

"The first year I started in San Francisco, there was an American work on every program and there's been a lot of music by living composers and gradually that was part of the process of getting the audience really to trust me."