During his four-year tenure as conductor of the symphony orchestra, Kevin did much to raise the standards for the group. He challenged them with new repertory as well as with some of the giants of the traditional repertory. His performance of the Mahler Second Symphony was said by some long-time music faculty to be one of the highest points in the history of the School of Music.

The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It's a collaborative adventure.

We're the orchestra and he's the conductor.

Fresh proof of the risks you run in writing about players, and of the advisability of not standing to leeward of their self-esteem when one has had the misfortune to wound it in the slightest degree. When you criticize a singer, you do not have his colleagues up in arms against you. Indeed, they generally feel that you have not been severe enough. But the virtuoso instrumentalist who belongs to a well-known musical organization always claims that in criticizing him you are 'insulting' the whole institution, and though the contention is absurd he sometimes succeeds in making the other players believe it.

Being a cover conductor is really like being an assistant conductor because I'm there as the orchestra rehearses with the (full-time) conductor. I'm there following along (on the score) and watching. It's just incredible to be around one of the best orchestras in the world.

The Prince stood beside the timpanist to count his rests for him and see that he came in in the right place. I suppressed all the trumpet passages which were clearly beyond the players' grasp. The solitary trombone was left to his own devices; but as he wisely confined himself to the notes with which he was thoroughly familiar, such as A flat, D and F, and was careful to avoid all others, his success in the role was almost entirely a silent one.