I'm still disturbed if a chord isn't together, but your priorities change as you get older.

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

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.

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 realized that the European dogma is not necessarily the only way to look at things.

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've learned a lot from the masters of orchestration, like Ravel and Stravinsky.