I'm trying to conduct only five months a year, and the rest will be composing time. I'm trying to spend as much as I can out of those months here in L.A., because for creative work, this is a fantastic place.

I went to work one morning, and outside my door was Cindy Crawford in a black bra, and I thought that very clearly the building is making progress in integrating itself into various layers of our culture.

It would be very tempting to say that why paint because we have Michelangelo, we have Leonardo [Da Vinci], we have all these guys. Why waste your time, because most likely you're not going to be on that level anyway.

Classic music somehow changed, and it changed between the first and the second world wars, and somehow what happened was that the hero that had been the composer, the hero now was the performer, and especially the conductor.

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.

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

After 30 years I have realized the greatest pleasure I can get is to have learnt.