Word: conductor
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...almost unnoticed. In the summer of 1936, the Music Project's pompous national director, Nikolai Sokoloff, went to Chicago to rehearse it for a concert under his own baton. When he heard it play he was afraid to be seen in public with it. Hastily recommending a new conductor and a shakeup in personnel, Director Sokoloff left town...
...from Cambridge. But he had caught the two o'clock at South Station. As he slumped in his seat, the last few breaths of life seemed to wheeze slowly in and out of his lungs. He had aged tremendously. His hands shook, and even when he spoke to the conductor, his voice whispered from a far away corner. It was no wonder that the N.Y., N.H. & H. hostess in her gray and red uniform led him forth from his seat like the Pied Piper with the magic words: "Grill Car in the rear...
Back in the '70s my mother was going through Missouri when the train stopped at a little town. A small, countrified looking woman got on and took the seat in front of her. The conductor, taking tickets, stopped at her seat but she looked straight ahead. "Your ticket, madam," he said. She replied, "I have no ticket." He asked, "Your pass, then?" She looked him in the eyes as she held up the stump of an arm and answered, "This is my pass." The conductor took another look and kept on going. It was Jesse James's mother...
Steinberg, an expert conductor in his own right, conducts without a score, like Toscanini. Unlike Toscanini, he waggles his head both for cues and for umph. And when pinches come, he winds up like Dizzy Dean and lets them have it. Steinberg's box score: one hit, one error (playing Anton Bruckner's interminable Fourth Symphony...
...Siegfried dragon, for example, seems hardly worth the trouble. This beast requires the services of eight men-two inside it, two to operate the pulleys opening and closing its jaws, one to shoot steam from its mouth, one to shout its music through a megaphone backstage, an assistant conductor watching for the conductor's beat through a peephole, a prompter speaking the dragon's words from the score. It is still only a papier-mache dragon...