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

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.

This country, and the West Coast, especially, is bad at preserving any cultural legacy.

Music has just as much to do with movement and body as it does soul and intellect.

With American orchestras, in particular, because they play in such huge halls, getting a true pianissimo is very hard.

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

I was starting a group of musicians and we had a group of young composers in Finland back in the '70s, and the real conductors, the professional conductors at the time were not interested in our stuff.