Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Van Dyke Parks down under

Van Dyke Parks:

“My mother once told me as a child, ‘Better to be interested than appear interesting,’ and I think that that has served me well.”

*

“Just to hear an orchestra tune up, to me, is the most profoundly enjoyable — well, I don’t want to seem Squaresville, but it just about beats sex for me. It’s a big thing. It’s good.”
From a lovely radio interview, now online:

Kelly Higgins-Devine interviews Van Dyke Parks (ABC Brisbane)

Van Dyke Parks is the keynote speaker at the Big Sound 2009 music conference in Brisbane, Australia.

A related post
“A song is an intimation of immortality”

comments: 1

Elaine Fine said...

There is something infinite about the members of an orchestra warming up on stage that is a wonderful cross between the random and the predictable. But a professional orchestra in the ritual of tuning is one of the most exciting experiences I know because of the "coming together" aspect of the whole process. It is 50-100 individuals meeting on and trading the same A, giving the audience and one another a kind of promise that something wonderful (and something in tune) will follow.