When an artist works today or whenever, it's not about creating immortal masterpieces, because that's the one thing we don't decide ourselves.

Orchestras have become used to the emphasis on the separation of layers, of the ultimate precision and clarity.

Conducting is intensely social. You work with a hundred people every day. You collaborate, you try to focus their thoughts, you try to give them a concept, you try to inspire them, and it's actually exhausting.

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.

I feel very free and very happy to be a composer.

Conducting was just something that happened by fluke.

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.