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.

Music history has flowed under the bridges for many years.

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.

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

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

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

When Philip Glass asked me if I would be interested in doing a new recording of Jesus' Blood he assumed that I would do something similar to the first version and wanted to know what other pieces would be on the same CD.