Craft is part of the creative process.

The academic area of new music or modern music festivals is not something which attracts me at all.

Somehow in the 20th Century an idea has developed that music is an activity or skill which is not comprehensible to the man in the street. This is an arrogant assertion and not necessarily a true one.

I have friends who have a CD mastering plant in Hollywood and they are very sceptical about European record labels' understanding of digital technology.

Still, American composers working in France have had a pretty hard time.

There's another way of making music, by touching the lives and feelings of ordinary people.

I remember once, when I started writing for the alto saxophone, a saxophonist told me to think of it as being like a cross between an oboe and a viola, but louder.