I feel that this is my artistic home, and I'm very happy to be a California artist together with many others who are not from here originally but who decided to make this the center of their activities. There's something about that that I find very inspiring and satisfying.

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

The Northern idea of form is more of a process. The various units of the form overlap. You can't tell where some things stop and new things start. This is typical of Sibelius.

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.

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

Somehow, conductor as this superhuman conduit between the masters and the masterpieces and the immortals.

Anyone who composes and conducts at the same time is immediately suspect, because he must be faking one or the other.