Michael Tilson Thomas Art Quotations

The way you survive in the performing arts is by having a sense of your audience, and doing things which entertain and satisfy the audience, but in a more important way, cause the audience to question many things.

Part of my mission is simply that: to bring the world of the arts, particularly classical music, closer to people so they don't feel that it is something remote that they have to specially prepare themselves for, or dress up for.

But you know in the contemporary art world, you pose a very interesting conundrum. All sorts of people collect very contemporary art, yet when it comes to the music which is analogous to that sort of art, they are not interested, or perhaps even hostile.