In my model, important interference phenomena arise when individual strata come into contact. These chaotic fluctuations are, I suppose, what my music is really about.

Composers dialogue - and obsessively, bitterly argue - with other composers, often over the span of several centuries.

When I speak of "cycles," I am referring to lengthy intervals of relative homogeneity, if not in the resolving of problems, than at least with respect to the consistency of their capacity to productively irritate.

I frequently compose out the entire metric structure of a piece in modified cyclic form, where each cyclic revolution undergoes some form of 'variation' much as if measure lengths were concrete musical 'material.'

This was possible only by dint of extended periods of frequently quite painful reflection and digestion.

Naturally enough, I couldn't have foreseen the vast sea change which has come upon that scene as a result of German reunification and associated events.

Certainly being in California has encouraged a sustained commitment to rethinking the nature, purposes, and relevance of the contemporary arts, specifically music, for a society which by and large seems to manage quite well without them.