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

Every orchestra I know, every opera house I know, is desperately looking around trying to find new talent, new composing talent, supporting young composers, supporting new ideas, supporting new ways of getting the message across.

The sort of commercial parameters of classical music changed after the [World War II] , and the whole industry became more backward-looking.

We need new art. Old art cannot do that. It can do lots of other things, and of course humanity hasn't changed that much in the last thousand or two thousand years.So that the old Greek dramas are still at the very heart, core, of human experience, but still we need new stuff.

I started conducting lessons and I realized that this is actually something I like doing.

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.

Los Angeles is just a more open place. The way L.A. functions is that people give you a forum. They say, Show us what you can do.