Blair Tindall > Quotes

“The orchestra musician’s plight caught the interest of Harvard researcher Richard Hackman, who was studying the job satisfaction of workers employed in a variety of industries. Orchestral musicians were near the bottom, scoring lower in job satisfaction and overall happiness than airline flight attendants, mental health treatment teams, beer salesmen, government economic analysts, and even federal prison guards. Only operating room nurses and semiconductor fabrication teams scored lower than these musicians.”
― Blair Tindall, Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music

“With a bad reed, my oboe could be a beastly instrument honking and squeaking as if it had a mind of its own. When my reeds were working, though, I learned that making a sound spoke my emotions more directly than my own voice.”
― Blair Tindall, Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music

“A few days later, a concertgoer from Hoboken had written to the New York Times in defense of the audience’s behavior: Perhaps Mr. Mehta should have realized he was inflicting on the audience not one but several compositions by Anton von Webern. Since many concertgoers regard performances of Webern as the musical equivalent of a visit to the dentist, audience unrest should not have been a surprise.”
― Blair Tindall, Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music

“the phone rang just before 8 P.M., like the night second oboist Jerry Roth, dad of CNN’s Richard Roth, suffered an accident involving a roller-skating waiter, scalding hot soup, and his lap. I sight-read the concert; he recovered.”
― Blair Tindall, Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music