Sportsmanlike Conduct(or)

This blog has been a place for me to share my observations about similarities between two subjects about which I am passionate: classical music and baseball. Because the sport I love and write about is a team sport, my analogies have tended to center around what it means to perform as an individual on a team—a baseball team or an orchestra—at the professional level.

I was fascinated, then, to read the personal observations about similarities between classical music and sports by none other than our Music Director at the Metropolitan Opera, Yannick Nézet-Séguin!

I found what he had to say particularly interesting because his basis of comparison was not to a team sport but to a solo sport: professional tennis.

I particularly liked how he suggested that an appreciation of sports in general and tennis in particular could be seen as a “gateway” to enjoying classical music:

Classical music and opera in general is [like professional tennis] also something that you can just sit and watch people really sweat and give their all at the service of something that’s very beautiful. It’s a very human experience when you see people giving their all on their instruments and sweating it.

It’s maybe what can draw sports fans who probably sometimes think, Oh, I love sports. I don’t really like art. But maybe they forget that great art, the way we do it, is also witnessing a human reaching the peak of or outdoing themselves and just going beyond their human limits.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin

I read Maestro Nézet-Séguin’s observations in a thought-provoking interview he recently gave to Sports illustrated. You can read the interview in its entirety here.

The interview was written in anticipation of an appearance by our Music Director, some of my MET Orchestra colleagues, and baritone Will Liverman at Arthur Ashe Stadium. The musicians provided a musical prelude to the Men’s Finals of the U.S. Open last Sunday, September 10th.

Here’s a video of the performance: