I actually don't like this term, "classic." It's wrong, but we don't have a better word at the moment.

Anyone who composes and conducts at the same time is immediately suspect, because he must be faking one or the other.

I went to work one morning, and outside my door was Cindy Crawford in a black bra, and I thought that very clearly the building is making progress in integrating itself into various layers of our culture.

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."

I think we are in the process of getting the word out, and we haven't done very well yet. But we are trying.

I've learned a lot from the masters of orchestration, like Ravel and Stravinsky.

There is such a suspicion in today's world of people who do more than one thing, who aren't specialized.