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Show Abravanel on rock Elitelike symphony's music i i that today. I don't tw to take drugs where take drugs, it's juste: i far as music, really ) dren go for Beettiovri Beatles to them, if; gone. I'm not here to es-" Beatles, but you sh.:. them with melodies bj: or Jerome Kern. I tk,-.' Beatles) tunes are ireful; ire-ful; I think there is v vention. Of course rk them with the serious -ten today, then I ao:r. much more tune in aij than in much "classic; r is being written today. ; D.G. You have tai;-; Symphony from a to one of the outstr-i sional orchestras in : today. What plans to the Symphony? J M.A. My most imports":; have the Symphony : where nobody has loh1-uled loh1-uled job elsewhere. Inrj I want my musicians to;; because they do thai- But I want them to dc"j a basis that the Synr" job, and they do the :j basis like the Phfe, teach at Curtis, theM harmonic men teach-, and so on. ; D G. Thank you, Ma;r; el. ' (There are 13 more s& left in which you can remarkable man makir; the orchestra he has i to develop, the Utah DON GRAVES: Being a student, I know a lot of kids who don't like the symphony or classical music. They think it is dead and not relevant. rele-vant. Rock is it, the Beatles and Grand Funk. Is the orchestra a museum piece, or does it say something some-thing to the 24,000 students at the U? MAURICE ABRAVANEL: It sure does! That is what we play at schools; we get standing ovations playing Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. Tchaikov-sky. In the last ten years or so, young people have been told again and again not to be interested in the symphony and Beethoven because be-cause the Beatles and rock is where it's at. I have news for you. When the last time we performed Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony" there was a rock group across at the Salt Palace. And I have some mucisians who are very interested in rock, and so after our concert they went over across the street. They were dumbfounded to find out that we had a bigger audience for the "Ninth Symphony" than that rock group had at the Salt Palace. It is true that the majority of young people go more for rock music than for classical music, but that was always the case. Popular music can speak to anybody; the better, more thoughtful type of music speaks only to an elite. Just as a comic will be enjoyable reading read-ing for everybody, even those with a low I.Q., and a very high one too. While it takes a higher I.Q., to enjoy en-joy Shakespeare. And so all that about the Beatles is so silly because be-cause it is entertainment. You know, a book of poetry will never sell like a who-dun-it or "Valley of the Dolls." Books like that always sell in the millions, while poetry will sell only in the thousands. You know, symphonies, chamber music, is something for an elite, for people who want to recognize their full potential as human beings. I have spent three hours and twenty minutes to see that "Woodstock" "Wood-stock" (film). I know nothing about that kind of music, but after all I am a human being. There was one great moment; when Joan Baez sang. The rest was good, but to my taste very primitive. Rhythm is a very important thing, and there was rhythm galore there. But otherwise there is no subtlety the moment you use so much machinery. That is the one thing I don't understand about young people who profess to talk so much about human nature and the human being, and I am with them all the way. The same young people will crowd into places where all they hear is 90 per cent machinery, mach-inery, you know, microphones, amplifiers, am-plifiers, $5,000 worth of accoustical machines and five guys, five brains, five souls, but thousands of dollars worth of machinery. And those are the same young people who want to rebel against the Machine, in which I join them. But in the symphony sym-phony you get human beings, no microphones, no amplifiers. Instruments Instru-ments made without any machine. You know, direct communication from soul to soul, from an to man. This, I believe, attracts any young man or girl who really gives it a try. But I'm sorry to say that I don't understand the tendency of young people, not all of them of course, to be conformists. In my day we were individualists; we didn't care for the establishment. We did all kinds of different things. But today to-day I see so many young people who don't dare having their hair short because everyone else has their hair long. In our day we had our hair long when everyone else had his hair short. We did all kinds of crazy things. I don't see much of |