Creativity Quote by Michael Tilson Thomas

A big orchestra isn’t a museum of masterpieces so much as a working repertory machine, and Michael Tilson Thomas is letting you see the gears. By calling it “basically a repertory company,” he borrows theater language to argue that orchestral playing is closer to acting than to athletic precision: the job is not to project a single, signature “orchestra sound,” but to inhabit many sound worlds on command. That framing quietly pushes back against a common audience fantasy that great orchestras are defined by a fixed sonic brand. Tilson Thomas suggests the opposite: excellence is elastic.

The phrase “very enormous repertoire” does more than brag about scale; it’s a practical defense of why orchestral culture is conservative about training, rehearsal discipline, and institutional memory. When you’re responsible for Mahler one week, Stravinsky the next, then contemporary commissions, the core skill becomes rapid stylistic code-switching. “Shift focus” is a euphemism for a high-wire psychological task: suppress your habits, recalibrate your ear, and rebuild ensemble instincts in real time.

The subtext also touches labor and hierarchy without naming them. Players are asked to “instantly become part” of a demanded sound world - a reminder that individuality is subordinated to a collective aesthetic set by conductor, composer, and tradition. It’s an almost cinematic image: professionals stepping into a role at the downbeat, not to disappear, but to fuse into something larger, convincing, and historically specific.