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 can't imagine how many first performances I've done, perhaps 500. Some of them have been very good, and some of course very bad.

This country, and the West Coast, especially, is bad at preserving any cultural legacy.

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.

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.

I like this idea of identification with the local team. I think it's great. That's what an orchestra should be. It's an orchestra for its hometown, and it serves the people.

There will have to be times when I'm not conducting because I'm composing. I haven't solved that problem, and perhaps I never will.