I realized that the European dogma is not necessarily the only way to look at things.

Somehow, conductor as this superhuman conduit between the masters and the masterpieces and the immortals.

Every day we make more progress toward understanding the concert hall.

If we always thought like that, why would we study physics, why would we think of cosmology, why would we do any kind of research? Because we know already so much that there is no one person who can contain all that information.

If somebody had told me when I was starting composition in Helsinki in the '70s that I would end up in L.A. and to describe that journey, those 17 years with the philharmonic and building the hall and this and that, I would have said, "This is a fairy tale of the first order."

My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.

I'm composing more than before. I'm cutting down on conducting.