Zander Conducts the "7 Habits" Set

I recently found this video of Benjamin Zander, best known to me as conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, giving a talk at TED. Techniques of evangelizing classical music seem diverse, but this is the second time I've someone use phrasal analysis (in a sense). However, instead of an affable family-friendly crowd, this is a CEO/high executive crowd whose time is really fucking important to them who, granted, are spending a week at an invitation-only wonderland conference. Conservatory students are remarkably similiar in being overprotective about their time, but unlike CEOs they aren't at all interested in optimizing or streamlining or really other people at all, hence the slow choking death of "student life" at most such institutions.

Zander's humor and good nature make me wish I had seen the Boston Phil more often, having only seen them once when Sharon Isbin rolled through to play the Concierto de Aranjuez. Coincidentally or not, this was two weeks before Pepe Romero played the same piece with the BSO. While I made several jokes about the battle for the rights of "Boston's second best orchestra", the Boston Phil and BMOP seem more and more like two sides of the same coin: more nimble and adventurous than the elephant across the street can be. If one can call a Mahler cycle over four years nimble.

P.S.: On a Boston-related note, Go Revs!