Terry Roberts, PhD

Terry Roberts, thanks for spending some time with me.

Thank you for asking me.

Absolutely. So I like to kind of get started, as you know, pretty casual conversation with who is Terry Roberts.

Yeah, that was an interesting starting point. Well, I guess I wear two hats. I'm a professor and a musician, so, and I Conduct the symphony and I teach at Francis Marion. And before that I was playing French horn in Europe for 16 years. Oh wow. Solo horn in a German opera house for 8 years and solo horn in Monte Carlo Philharmonic for 8 years. Oh wow. Yeah. So I got to see a lot of Europe, a lot of things. Right. That's one good thing about being a musician, you get to travel places for free basically. I guess it's free, you're still working. Sure. Yeah. And of course then I had to learn two other languages, which isn't a bad thing, so that was good.

Got paid to learn two other languages.

Yeah. So it's an old seek or swim thing. Sure. So, but yeah, everyone, when I meet people, they go, wow, you're sort of like, I thought you'd be real artsy, but you like football and you play golf. Yeah. I grew up in the South, come on.

Right, for sure. Yeah, well, again, I think that the, especially here in the South, you have a stereotype, right? You're either the football player or you're in the band. Yeah. You're either, and again, a lot of the folks that I meet are somewhere in between. You can be one and like the other.

Sure, yeah.

So, you know, again, the band folks, at least at my high school when we had one, 'cause I went to a small high school, They made it to every game a football player did. So you might as well watch in between halftimes.

That's part of my scholarship in college. It was being in the marching band at Florida State, and that was a huge band. And just like football team went 2 weeks before school started, and every day you were working out.

Absolutely. I didn't know you were Seminole. How about that?

Oh, yes. But my daughter went to Clemson. I had to pay for that.

Yeah, well, if only she played the French horn, you'd have been all right.

Anything. No, it's good she doesn't play the French horn.

I have a client who lives in North Carolina but whose daughters both go to South Carolina, and while they didn't get full-ride band scholarships as kids who were committed to the band as freshmen coming in, they do get to pay in-state tuition, which I didn't know.

That's right.

I mean, that's the equivalent of what, a $15,000 or $20,000 a year scholarship. So it's, again, it's a— A neat opportunity. So how did you go from— I mean, how did you get into music?

Well, my dad was a music educator. So we always had instruments around the house. And so when I was 6, I took piano lessons and then I started playing the horn. My dad just handed it to me and said, here's a book and here's a horn, go play the horn. Come back in an hour and play a scale for me. And it worked, I could play it. And then I played cello for a while. Then he said, you got to pick one. I said, well, the horn has a smaller case than the cello, so take the horn. There you go. At first I wanted to be a trombone player, do jazz and stuff. And he goes, no, just try the horn. So, but I mean, you can—

it's transferable to some extent.

I mean, I've played all sorts of different things. I played with Kansas, Moody Blues, Bob Brody, you know. Nice. Just depends on what you need. Sure. But yeah, then I just started taking lessons and doing the whole band thing, all-state and orchestra thing, and started gigging when I was 14, playing for musicals and stuff.

Right.

Then I picked up the bass guitar, and when I had hair and long hair played in rock bands, and then I got tired of lugging all that equipment around. Then I switched to doing jazz where you just have one little amp, and I made a lot of money in high school and college playing clubs at night. So, okay, yeah. Then, uh, when I graduated college, I went over Europe for one year. Supposedly I went for 16, right? I went with two suitcases in my horn and came back with a wife and a kid and Whole thing. Funny how that works out. Yeah. But the funny thing is my wife's from Wilmington actually, so.

Really?

Yeah, but we met over there.

Now where did you grow up?

Oh gosh, I'm from Oklahoma originally and then we went to Rochester, New York. My dad was in grad school when I was a little kid and then his first college job was in Maryville, Tennessee outside of Knoxville. Small college, Maryville College. And then we went down to Baton Rouge. He was getting his doctorate. And then we was in Fort Worth. Then when I was 16, I had my driver's license for a month. I drove all the way from Fort Worth to Lumberton, North Carolina.

Wow.

From, uh, my dad taught at Pembroke, back then Pembroke State. He was a band director. And then, uh, yeah, I went from Fort Worth to Lumberton. That was a culture shock.

Culture shock for sure.

But I mean, my last year of high school in Lumberton, everybody can't believe that. But then I got a scholarship down at Florida State, so I went down there, you know.

Yeah, and, uh, that's a fun place to hang out for 4 years.

It was, uh, yeah, I— when I went back to grad school after 20 years and I looked at my transcripts and I saw the GPA just go down as by the senior year.

Sure, yeah. Well, listen, I went to, I went to, uh, Tallahassee for 2 weekends and I couldn't get out of 2 weekends without my GPA going down, so I can't imagine trying to do it.

It was, uh, yeah, my first experience of like the marching band is, uh, from Lumberton. So you in the marching band, it's 250 people back then, now it's 450. But so you first game was an away game in Miami in the old Orange Bowl. So here I am, biggest stadium I ever played in was Lumberton High School. I'm going in the Orange Bowl playing first game. Wow.

Yeah. Wow. Well, and again, you don't have to go to even to the games to see the commitment that big universities made to the band because at least at Clemson, just the practice fields and the elevated platform for people to be able to. So what was the biggest venue stadium-wise that you ever played in when you were— I mean, first game would be, it's kind of like, uh, Jerry Clower's old joke, first college football game he ever saw, he played in. I mean, I, it's, I mean, to be first ballgame, Florida State, Miami in the Orange Bowl. Yeah, it was pretty big time for, for day one. What was the biggest, uh, what was the biggest venue like that you, you had to do in the marching band?

The marching band? Well, it was, we went to Miami, of course, down in Gainesville, that place down there.

Oh yeah.

We weren't in the ACC back then, so we were independent. So we played Auburn once. That was a strange place. But yeah, so yeah, it was all different, but mostly in the Southeast. So gotcha.

It was an interesting way though. It's funny as I'm listening and thinking, you talked about getting to tour Europe, but you also in college, you got to go a lot of cool places and see a lot of— I mean, there are a lot of grown men I know, and women for that matter, who would love to tour a bunch of SEC stadiums.

So I guess I played also— I'm just thinking about— I played in the old Astrodome. Okay. We took a— that was an interesting bus trip because we went from Tallahassee to Houston with a stopover in New Orleans. By the time we got to Houston, everyone was just—

yeah, it was a rough day to play. I can—

I've been to New Orleans, so I, I completely Completely understand. So yeah, got to play there in the old Astrodome. We stayed at the Astroworld Hotel right across the street.

Okay. And then, so after college you decided you were going to go try Europe for a year. Yeah. And what was that like?

Well, I went to study with a teacher there in Cologne, and he's very famous. And he said, I couldn't speak German at the time, he couldn't speak English, so a lot of the terminology— well, most of the terminology in music is Italian.

Right.

So we sort of communicated that way with the musical terms. And then he was saying, "Oh, you need to get money, so go audition for this job, it's just up the river in Düsseldorf." I said, "Okay." I got the job, so I guess I'm staying.

Right.

It just sort of worked out that way.

That's— well, again, it's funny where life takes us. And so now, your wife was from Wilmington, but you met her over there?

I met her in Monte Carlo. She was a ballet dancer and she worked before in Pacific Northwest in Seattle. Then she came over and worked in northern— Ballet du Nord in northern France. And then she came to Monte Carlo as the ballet mistress for the Monte Carlo Ballet. And someone introduced us. And at first I was like, I don't want to know about it because ballet made us work more. But then we sort of just started going out and found out we'd crossed paths a lot. We're about the same age and we've been at the same places probably at the same time. Right. Didn't know it. So.

That's funny.

It's weird. Yeah. Let's see, when I first asked her to marry me, she said, you're not serious. I said, okay, forget it. And then, you know, I said, well, having a kid, maybe she can marry. Okay, let's get married. Yeah, well, I, you know, we got married over there, which was wild, in Monte Carlo. And it was all in French, and everyone was laughing, all my friends. I had it, we had a very eclectic group of friends. I can imagine, all nations, sure. So, uh, it was a deputy mayor, very French style with the sash and everything. Nice. And he's He was getting really frustrated. At the end he goes, "I finally pronounce you man and wife." He's out of there.

He had had enough. Well, that's— it's also neat that friends and family came over for—

Well, no, they didn't. That was even better. Okay. No, but they couldn't come. So what happened was when we went home my parents did like a reception thing or something in Kentucky. They were living in Kentucky. They live there now. So, uh, yeah, so we just decided to go ahead and get married there. We already owned a house and everything, so I just said, we're just going to do that. And we had a nice party. There you go. Then the next day, uh, Susan got a call from the Bon Ballet Company. The next morning, and it was a guy speaking German, so she hands me the phone, and I said yes. So they want you to come up and teach ballet class for a week. When? He said tomorrow. Okay, we're off. That's our honeymoon. Boom, go to Bonn. All she did was teach you every morning for an hour and a half, and then we'd go have lunch and walk around Bonn.

Sure.

And I had friends up there, right?

Still kind of check everything out. That's neat. Yeah. Um, so it went all the way to Monte Carlo to meet A girl from kind of right up the road. Yeah. That's wild. So how did you get from Monte Carlo to Florence?

Well, we just decided I was gonna go into conducting, which of course is, as most of the guys I asked who were in orchestras and went into conducting, Jerry Swartz was principal trump in New York. Phil, and then he went into conducting. His exact words, that's when you learn what really crappy gigs are, is when you quit your good gigs. And I said, let's move back, see what happens. Of course, you put everything on a container, takes 3 months to get your furniture and everything. So went and hung out with my parents for 3 months with a baby. Well, he was a year and a half, I guess, my son. And that was interesting. Anyway.

I can imagine.

So then I went back to school. I was going to teach and start conducting and stuff. You know, went through some lean times and just sort of suck it up. And I gigged a lot. And she was teaching ballet. And now she's here. We came here initially, I was writing my dissertation for my doctorate. And we were down in Tallahassee again, and she's got a job with the South Carolina Dance Theater here. So I said, well, we can go up there, up here to Florence. Sure. And you can teach ballet and I'll write my dissertation, and I was playing in different orchestras, gigging around, and then we'll leave after a year or two. That was in '98, so. Mm-hmm.

It's a familiar story.

Yeah. She was not quite 1 when we moved here. And she said, she basically grew up here, she said, "I'm not ever going anywhere." So, oh my gosh.

Right.

So, all of her friends went to Clemson, she went to Clemson, okay, alright.

Yeah, go Tigers. I'm a Clemson man, so I'm here for it. It's interesting though, that's not an unfamiliar story as far as I came to Florence and just never left. Before I get into your time in Florence, I'm curious, how do you decide to go from play— you mentioned good gigs to bad gigs in jest, I know, but how do you decide to become a conductor?

Well, I talked to a lot of other conductors who were musicians in orchestras, and It's like you're sitting watching a conductor, so you're actually learning a lot. A lot. What to do, what not to do, you know, things like that. And I would study scores all the time. That's the whole orchestra in a book basically. And I just started to get into it, then I would form little groups to practice, and I went to some workshops and things. And it just sort of happened eventually. I just got more and more interested in doing that. Musically, I wanted to expand, because basically you never stop learning when you're a musician, or any of the arts for that matter. You're always learning something. I mean, I'll never be able to actually know all the music that's out there. It's almost impossible. And plus all the new music coming out. And I'm not just talking about classical, I'm talking any music, you know. And I try, and especially with what I'm doing here, Francis Marion, I try to keep up with the latest in commercial music and things like that, you know. So it's a never-ending education, which I like. It's great. So, yeah, it's just, I just wanted to expand what I did, you know.

So, and so then you got here with her. Yeah. And decided to stay. Did you start with the orchestra first or Francis Marion?

Uh, orchestra. This will be my 20th season coming up.

How about that?

Yeah, so I've been with the orchestra 20 years now. And yeah, that sort of happened, uh, that became available and I applied and auditioned concert. Me and they had like 4 people, I think. And they all said, "Well, you're here, might as well take you." I got lucky, you know.

And been here ever since.

Yeah, and then I was teaching part-time at Francis Marion Adjunct, and they wanted to start this music industry degree. It's been about, I guess, 14 years ago. And they asked me to help them write it and everything, and I did. Sort of made a job for myself, more or less. So then they hired me to do the music industry degree. And been doing that ever since.

How about that. And what is the music industry degree?

It's different from, it's not music ed or anything, but we have what we call 3 tracks. You can do either technology, so we have recording studio and a lot of technical courses. Or you can do the business track, which is commerce, agents, retail, whatever, stuff like that. Gotcha. Or performance track if you want. We do have some that do a performance track, you know, if you want to focus on your voice or instrument, you can do that too.

That's neat. I didn't know that.

Yeah, it's relatively new. In higher education, this is sort of a new thing now, music business or music industry. Sure. And it's becoming— I said I wish I'd known all this stuff when I got out of college that I know now. I wouldn't have been ripped off so many times, but you know. For sure. Yeah. But that happens to everybody, not just in music.

I think so, and I think that the longer you're around anything, you start to— again, for me, having never been in the music business at all, I can play a harmonica. But only because I can breathe, literally. And, you know, but just being in business and now doing business with folks who've been in the music bit, you realize what a business— honestly, what a business everything is. Sure. Music and all the different— how people get paid and how some of the royalties and some of those things work.

And that's super complicated.

Well, it is. But to the layperson, and again, for me, I work with a lot of physicians because we live in Florence. And, you know, again, understanding the way the health system works is very similar where you, you know, you hang around anything long enough, you start to see the business side of things. I think it's really neat that young people who can be interested, because the music business has changed a lot since the iPod, you know, from the MP3 player the iPod especially and the fractional, you know, instead of buying either records or tapes where you got to buy, you know, you can buy or even don't even have to buy in some cases songs.

Go on YouTube and pirate half of it.

One of the more interesting things in music that I heard was the, and I'm sure again you probably know, Old Town Road, the song Old Town Road, and those two young people were in completely different countries, didn't speak— if I remember right, didn't speak the same language. The one, the one guy was, um, you know, in another country and put the beat up for sale, and then the, the musician found it, and then they kind of collaborated on it. And of course, then eventually later, right, they— if I, I remember that story, right, talking about how weird kind of the music business can be. It went to hit— it hit the country charts, and they decided— the country folks decided it wasn't country music. So then they went and said, well, who's the most country people person I know? And Billy Ray, Achy Breaky Heart guy, right? And it's like, somebody get me Billy Ray Cyrus. Brought him in, went to number one. And it's all just— that's an interesting thing I think about music is there aren't any boundaries, especially now. Oh, no.

It's all crossover. So even young composers now for like symphonic music or whatever, a lot of them grew up playing in rock bands or whatever, or doing electronic music. So now they're combining this with larger things. To me, that's interesting. I like that. There's a piece I really want to do, but It's hard. It's written by a composer named Gabriel Prokofiev, who is the grandson of the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. He lives in London. He wrote this— wrote it for the British Youth Orchestra, piece for turntable and orchestra. In other words, there's a disc jockey up there with the orchestra.

That'd be awesome. Fantastic. Well, I was— I talked recently with Bud Simmons, and I told him my favorite act that's been at the PAC was Black Violin. Oh God. And I'm so excited that they're coming back because again, it's that fusion of the classical instrument but with again, a little more— again, there are plenty of classical pieces that are upbeat, but they aren't necessarily what we listen to today. And so Again, fascinating. I have loved them. I bought all of their music the day after they left. Trish and I downloaded all of their stuff.

Well, one of the guys is a Florida State guy too.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, the viola player.

They're both from Florida. But just the energy of it, and so I hope someday you get the disc jockey figured out.

Yeah, well, and Black Violin actually does a symphony thing they've tried out. I'd love to get them going. Okay, well, they might be—

hey, they'll be here soon.

Yeah. I got to see them again after they were here. I was in Anaheim at a conference and they played their outdoor concert for free. Wow, that's great.

Well, now, if I'm not mistaken, after they were here the first time, one of their songs got picked up— was it by pro football? I can't remember. Kind of as a background piece for maybe Monday Night Football or something like that. Just again, it's interesting. And of course, starting to understand some of the music business, you go, that's a good gig because, you know, they're playing it every week. And so that's pretty—

yeah, I was talking about that last night actually with Brandon Goff. I don't know if you know him. He's one of the professors here, but he plays a lot. He does the technology part and he composes and everything. And we were talking about trying to organize a— make up a show and get residuals, stuff like that. So that's the money part right there.

Well, it's a— again, I think about, you know, Trish's— at the, you know, at the Little Theater now. And, uh, yeah, again, she's in the play, isn't she? She's in, in Clue coming up. And so, you know, thinking about the fact that somebody wrote that, and for us to be able to put it on, somebody had to pay, you know, pay for that. You look at Phantom of the Opera, of course I saw where— I don't know if it's the end of this year, maybe the end of next year, they're going to quit running it on Broadway.

Yes, I think it's in February, I want to say.

Maybe so. But for 20-plus years.

Yeah.

And yeah, again, it's a— or, um, you know, Hamilton, and you look at how that spun off and what a— what a neat— again, a lot of those things. But it is, it's a big business when you figure out where the people get paid.

Yeah, well, it's— that's one of the things when I teach music commerce, you, you see the whole money stream, how it goes, and it's a lot of people involved. For every one artist, it's about 200 people. Oh wow. Yeah, so that's a lot of streams of money happening there.

Sure. Well, it's— and it certainly is, is big business. So when you, you talk about artists, I'm curious One of the things that for me as a business person, but also as a leader, that, you know, that I hear is people talking about wanting their business or their team to run like a symphony.

Yeah.

And so I'm curious, how do you do that? Like, what's the process, number one, of finding people and putting it together to begin with?

Well, Yeah, finding the right people.

Number 2, kind of—

finding the right people is very key, but also, um, it's a lot of psychology involved and, uh, getting the people to feel comfortable, but at the same time challenging them to play maybe a little better than they think they can, right? And I always try to push it a little bit every time, you know, I just say, you can do this or whatever, we'll figure it out. So it's very, it's like coaching. You've got to organize everybody. Gotcha. And make it, you have a, and I used to say when I gave masterclass, you have to have a game plan, just like in coaching. This is what you're gonna do when you go into the rehearsal. You can't just go there and say, open up, okay, let's play this. You have it all planned out. I write down everything I wanna do beforehand. And so you have a plan, and this goes when I'm— well before I start rehearsing, like studying for months, sometimes years, depending on the piece, and deciding how I want to do this, knowing the people you're working with, how you want to approach them. There's always going to be a strong and a weak, but you have to make it all sound the same.

Right.

It has to work together. So yeah, it's a lot of psychology involved. And you know, I had to learn through the years how to help influence people without— the pedagogy thing, you always give a compliment before you give a critique. Right. For sure. And my stock phrase, which they all know now, the orchestra says, "It's almost perfect." So, you know, well, again, it is—

I've never heard it compared to coaching.

Yeah, it's very much, uh, well, like if you are CEO of a business, you've got to have the right people and, and also be— trust those people to do what they need to do. That's another thing for sure.

Yeah, one of the things that I— again, so one thing you may not know is what— and I don't know how you would is that about a month ago, because a lot of my kids moved out at the same time and Trish started doing the little theater, I signed up to coach high school football. Oh wow. And so I hadn't, I hadn't played football in going on 30 years, I mean with pads on, and hadn't coached anything other than flag since then. And so it is a Again, I've seen a lot of parallels between that and running a business. I mean, there have been— it's very transferable business things to trying to reach young people. And, and honestly, and vice versa, I've learned as much to bring back to, to business. But it's— I hadn't— again, it's interesting how transferable that is to your world. And what, what I'm— when you talking about having a plan, one of the things I hadn't— that really hadn't dawned on me, because again, I don't have any understanding of the symphony world, other than knowing a few musicians, is the idea of kind of an install, right? For a football team, you've got a— you've got to decide how you're going to install your offense in training camp. Or some of those things. And again, you're sitting here as a conductor, again, as this kind of watching over me, you're sitting here with this entire piece. How do you decide? How do you figure out like how? Because there are multiple sections, right? Everybody kind of has, and you got to get each one of them good at their part, how do you figure out how to install the whole— I mean, I'm assuming that's part of that game plan that you're talking about. Yes.

Well, yeah, you go through— like, I'll know I want to rehearse certain sections of a piece, right? You just don't start at the beginning and go to the end every rehearsal. Usually what I— my plan is usually I read through the whole piece the first rehearsal, read through the whole program. And then I come back the next rehearsal. And I go back and pick out the places that need work. So your plans change as— Sure. —the orchestra, you hear where work needs to be done. Sure. And what needs to be explained. And that's how you have to be flexible. It's just like anything else. You have to be flexible and know how to solve the problem quickly. I'll give you a good example. Art Garfunkel came here, right? So he was still having problems with his voice and whatever, and he was trying to sing "Bridge Over Troubled Water," and they wanted to do a modulation, which is changing, going lower, in the middle of the piece. And he had a guitar player that was with him, Tab was his name, and said, can we do this? I said, yeah. I just went, looked at the score, went to the orchestra, play this note, play this note, play this note, and go here. And like, real quick. And we did it. Now, the tour manager came up and said, hey, can you write all that in the score? I said, if you pay me, I can. That's called arranging. Right. I said, I'm doing this on the fly, so to accommodate him.

To accommodate.

So yeah, you have to be very flexible. For sure.

Well, again, it's, um, it's funny because, uh, you know, again, joining this football team, right, first, first 3 games we scored an average of 42 points and lost 2 out of 3. Oh yeah, maybe lost all 3. Yeah, yeah. And it becomes one of those things where to some It's not right in your mind as an outsider, because that's what I was, especially at first. It's kind of like, I don't even know why we practice offense right now. Like, we don't have any trouble scoring. But again, to equate that to a— well, we play through the whole piece and we figure out first where the problems are. Let's go, these are the things that are going to require the most work, right? And to go in and kind of start diagnosing that from the beginning is a— again, it's an interesting application of what apparently, right, as you look across disciplines, is apparently a universal principle.

Well, it's almost like— I like, especially this time of year, I like watching baseball. Right. No, that it's like a chess game, you know, where you're putting people in the shifts, which are going to eliminate now. I don't know why, but anyway, all this stuff, and it's sort of the same way. So how are you gonna— where are you gonna use the best— your best resources in the best place, right?

So yeah, well, and again, I think it's, uh, again, because they're, they're moving the shifts, right? I used to coach baseball football, and you could pitch around somebody. Yeah, yeah. You could— there are ways. One of the things that, that has struck me with football is you can have 10 out of 11 people do their job and on any given play give up a touchdown. Yeah, it is a— and I would think, it seems to me like, for the most part A symphony is more like that, where you could have one person be really, really off and mess up an entire section or an entire piece. And so it's really important for everybody to do their job.

Well, I used to have, back in high school, a band director said, uh, the band's only as good as the worst person in it. I didn't know if I'd agree with that, but you know, He was basically trying to get people to step up, you know. Sure.

Yeah, well, and again, so how do you coach artists? So you have, you play the whole piece, but you also, I'm assuming, you have to break them into groups, or do you?

Yeah, we do work with a certain section of the orchestra on a certain part of it, yeah. I do that. A lot of it's, well, most of these people are professional, semi-professional, so a lot of it's just pointing something out and going, "Okay, let's go over this together so that we're all in agreement how to play this." Especially with the strings, you know, you've got 12 first violins and they're all playing the same thing and sometimes someone's not getting the notes right. And it's my job, half my job is listening. Sure. And then you work that and you put it together with something else. Like, sometimes I'll start at the end of a piece and work backwards and just put it together little by little. Gotcha. So, you know, a lot of it is very redundant.

Sure. But nuance though, and it sounds like a lot of feel, you know, and understanding your players.

Yeah, we have.

That's interesting. I won't ask you who your favorite person you've played with is.

Oh gosh, a ton of different people. I'm sure.

Well, and again, we've had a lot of great folks come through the symphony here, and a lot of them have stayed and kind of hung around.

I think probably funny, when I was 17, up in Lumberton, I got asked to play the horn, uh, on a gig in Fayetteville at the old Coliseum, whatever that was, arena, I guess, with Isaac Hayes. Oh wow. And I was like, wow, this is great, you know. So I'm sitting there. Well, they had a rehearsal right before the show, not with Isaac Hayes, right? It was a big book of songs and The conductor, you just call up a number and you flip to it. Well, he called up a number and it wasn't anything we looked at. I said, hey, hey, there's— it says solo here. And the guy goes, yeah, you're going to be great. I said, okay, no pressure. But I mean, it was exciting. That was really exciting. Sure, I loved it.

Yeah, well, it sounds like it's been quite a journey.

A lot of fun. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it is, it is fun. I mean, the one good thing about being a musician is that instant gratification you get performing live, right? You know, like in art or photography, you have to wait and do it all, whatever. Uh, in acting, of course, if you're filming, you have to wait, but if you're live stage performance, so I just love live stuff. I mean, I recorded a lot, and I used to hate doing it because you had to keep doing it until it was right, right? Sure. And when you're like Monte Carlo, God, I made like 40 different CDs or something, and, uh, you got 90 people and someone's gonna mess up, right? Right. And then if it's too many times and the whole orchestra is ready to—

right, then you're looking for a different person. Yeah, I would have to think that's, um, because it could go the other way, right? You know, the adrenaline of the good is in some part, I'm sure, driven by the 'this is live' kind of the pressure of that. So I assume it cuts both ways, but I would have to think that's kind of part of the drive that makes makes it so fulfilling.

Yeah, when the live thing, you know, you get reaction, you can feel a sort of reaction. Recording is sort of cut and dry. Sure. Because you can play something and then the engineer can come back and mix it completely different, right?

Do you, when you, you feel something different, let's say with the crowd while you're performing live, do you Do you make alterations, kind of in-game modifications? I mean, do you push or change?

I try not to do too much variance from the rehearsals just because that can get dangerous. Sure. And I've seen work with conductors who get a little too emotional and then it gets really messed up. Sure. Especially, what was the one guy, he was, gosh, what was his name, he was a Russian Jew guy who immigrated to Israel, but he was a really funny guy, but he had this, we used to call it a fishing pole for a baton. And he was a short little guy with big frizzy hair and he'd wave it around and get all emotional and everything, and no one knew what he was doing half the time. And sometimes the orchestra would just have to ignore him and play by themselves.

That's why. Well, I'd have to think it's a lot of, you know, if you're the third violinist, if there is such a thing, you hide a little bit. As a conductor, there's only one. Yeah. What's the hardest part?

The hardest part is that the stick doesn't make any noise, so you have to have faith that they're going to actually come in when you—

Gotcha. I mean, that's again trusting your—

Yeah, trusting your team. So, and you, you have to sort of show that confidence too, right? Like, uh, somebody said, I see you do this thing with your left hand all the time. Said, yeah, well, now the first violin know if I just flick my little finger, they, they'll play, right? Well, it takes time to figure all that stuff out, and they're used to me and I'm used to them, so it's good, you know.

It's awesome. Well, Terry, listen, I really appreciate it. This is kind of the last question. Yeah, the last question. I'm curious, because I think this tells a lot about people, right? Is if you could pick a fictional character, it could be somebody in a musical or in music or— Sorry, I took your shoe. A cartoon or any kind of fictional character you think best represents you, who would it be and why?

Okay, I'm gonna— So I told my wife this, and she immediately said, you should say Eeyore. Nobody loves me. I said, what do you mean? Well, you're just grumpy. I said, okay, I'll tell them that.

How does your dog feel? There's an old country music song, right? Yeah. I want you to love me like my dog does. Yeah, yeah. So, your wife says Eeyore. Who do you say?

Oh, I don't know. I'm more sort of like, I guess if you stick with Disney thing, like Goofy or something.

I'll joke around a lot. Sure. Well, I imagine again, in your line of work, being in the spotlight literally, there can be a lot of seriousness.

Oh yeah, and I try to keep it light because I like to say The one reason you became a musician or play music is because you enjoy it. When you were a kid, you liked doing it. Sure. So why should it be any different when you're an adult? You need to have a good time. That's why you're here.

Well, and that should be. Wouldn't it be nice if we could say that for all occupations?

Well, yeah. I'm very lucky to have that. Basically, I can— learn things every day and have fun and enjoy what I do. It's great. Amen. Terry, thank you. Oh, thank you, Chip, for having me.

I appreciate it. Okay.