I know that John Adams has had a very hard time directing French ensembles.

I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.

Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century.

Over the years I have tried to develop something which is technically assured.

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 work very fast, keeping the ideas flowing but making sure they come out the way I intended.

As I had collaborated with visual artists before whether on installations, on performance pieces, in the context of theatre works and as I had taught for a time in art colleges the idea of writing music in response to painting was not alien.