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

Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that.

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

Every orchestra I know, every opera house I know, is desperately looking around trying to find new talent, new composing talent, supporting young composers, supporting new ideas, supporting new ways of getting the message across.

I feel very free and very happy to be a composer.

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.

The classical music industry, has been an industry of covers. So we do covers, and if I compare this with the rock and pop side, what is the most exciting event?