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."

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.

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."

With American orchestras, in particular, because they play in such huge halls, getting a true pianissimo is very hard.

Stravinsky is masterly: his harmony is conceived so precisely that it can only be the way it is.

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.

I love a visceral sound, the kind that hits you in the belly.