Pokorny Performs Schifrin's Theme from Mission: Impossible

Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen. Since this is the last of the series, I finally have a chance to really thank my colleagues in the orchestra that give me joy all the time, whether I'm sitting in the front row or most usually in the back row. They are more, they are half magicians as well as musicians who take so many of the markings in the music and just make so much espressivo out of it. It's such a pleasure. I've got the best seat in the house and I really thank my colleagues very much for putting so much together. As well, it wouldn't be possible if I didn't, if I wasn't asked to play this solo and I was very glad that I was honored to have Maestro Muti ask me to play a solo. And this process started, I don't know, five, six years ago, something like that. It just so happens that Lalo Schifrin wrote this music and Maestro took it upon himself to learn this piece. There's not very many conductors who learn new music after the age of 21. Something, anyway, but really he just, you should see his score. It's completely marked up. The man has really worked very hard and one of the pleasures that I have working with him is knowing when he's in front of us, at least the way I look at it, it's like every piece of music that's in front of him is his favorite piece of music. It's the best piece of repertoire in western music and that's how he approaches all that and it's so inspiring for me and I certainly appreciate that about Maestro Muti. Out of the blue, I received a call this afternoon from Lalo Schifrin who thanks musicians in the orchestra and for Maestro Muti for going ahead and programming this music and as he said, it's the best birthday present he's going to have as he's turning 91 on Wednesday in Beverly Hills. Okay, in 1967, the 26-year-old Riccardo Muti won the Guido Cantelli, that was sleepless nights for me, let me tell you, won by unanimous vote a conducting competition, the Guido Cantelli conducting competition in Milan in 1967. In 1967, I was thrown out of the clarinet section at South Junior High School and was thrown into the sousaphone section in Downey, California. That happened in 1967 and in 1967, Lalo Schifrin was 35 years old and he was given the task of writing theme music for some spy thriller television series. He didn't know exactly what to do so he went ahead and he took the name Mission Impossible, found the acronym for it, MI, looked in a book and found that the Morse code for M is dash dash, the Morse code for I is dot dot. He put them together and repeated them over and over again and what you have is dash dash dot dot dash dash dot dot dash dash. His problem was solved in three minutes, he wrote the piece. Okay, and if you go to Google Earth and you go to this particular address on Hillcrest Avenue in Beverly Hills, you will find what dash dash dot dot what that brought to him. Here we go.