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Music31 min

Listening for What Isn't There

Forty years on the podium taught him that the hardest thing to conduct is silence — and that an orchestra hears everything you do not say.

Interviewee

Sample Interviewee — Conductor

Conductor and music director

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He arrives at rehearsal ninety minutes early, every time, and sits in the empty hall listening to the room. "Every hall has an opinion," he says. "You may as well find out what it is before eighty people are waiting on you."

What do you listen for?

Where the sound goes to die. Every room has a place where it disappears, and if you do not know where that is, you will spend the whole concert asking the players to fix something that is not their fault.

"An orchestra can hear everything you are not saying. You cannot fake conviction in front of eighty people."

This interview is condensed sample content prepared for design review.

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