There was this kind of mildly annoying mythology about conductor Like biker should riding a Harley-Davidson on an LP cover, and wearing a sort of a leather suit.

In Europe, there is so much tradition, and everyone has established ideas as to what art should be and what it has always been.

I'm composing more than before. I'm cutting down on conducting.

Sometimes you spend nine months, 10 months, a year writing a piece that you will hear two years later or something like that, and you never see anybody. It's a very different sort of metabolic.

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

If somebody had told me when I was starting composition in Helsinki in the '70s that I would end up in L.A. and to describe that journey, those 17 years with the philharmonic and building the hall and this and that, I would have said, "This is a fairy tale of the first order."

I think if you would like to describe composing as an act with one word, "slow" would be the word.