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 feel very free and very happy to be a composer.

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

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

If you think of the history, in the days of Brahms and Beethoven and all these guys, almost every concert was a new music concert. To play something old was really an exception.

We're not talking about an elite art form from the price point of view. We have a building in L.A. that is incredibly open, exciting, inviting, and all that, and there's no reason for this music not to be part of everybody's everyday life.

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