I always felt that one day I would have to make the change in my own life, bite the bullet and see what it is to be a composer who conducts rather than the other way around.

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

The underlying process in Northern music tends to be slower and continuous, whatever's happening on the surface; in Southern music the underlying process is always faster.

Of course, if you think of a European or American household in the '50s, so what were the things that when people started climbing up the ladder, what did they buy? A fridge, a TV, I think piano was the number three item in say '53 or '54.

Our audience, it has been a more difficult process for classical music audiences around the world, and I'm not completely certain why.

I discovered that the people of the North are different and there's no way you can make a person from the North similar to a Southerner. They're two different worlds.

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.