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.

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 don't believe in an annual dose of film music for the sake of it being film music. If we program film music, it will be because there is a real artistic reason for doing so.

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

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

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

There's so much energy exchange [in conduction], so you get back a lot, of course, but you also have to give a lot. It's kind of high-energy thing.