Sublime

Now, in the light of my “discovery,” I began to shift my attention to how effective I was at enabling the musicians to play each phrase as beautifully as they were capable.

I began to ask myself questions like “What makes a group lively and engaged?” instead of “How good am I?” So palpable was the difference in my approach to conducting as a result of this “silent conductor” insight, that players in the orchestra started asking me, “What happened to you?”

When I began playing the game of contribution, on the other hand, I found there was no better orchestra than the one I was conducting, no better person to be with than the one I was with; in fact, there was no “better.” In the game of contribution you wake up each day and bask in the notion that you are a gift to others.

When the Los Angeles Philharmonic, one of the most prestigious in the world, went looking for a new conductor, they had their pick of perhaps a thousand qualified individuals. These were world-class people who had been tested and proved at doing the work of running an orchestra the traditional way. They hired Gustavo Dudamel. He is a twenty-six-yea