Eighty percent of my pieces gravitate towards an A, as a tonal thing, not at the beginning, but somewhere in it.

I think art can reflect tragedy.

The French Revolution is the ultimate modernist statement. Destroy everything. Don't build on the past. There is no past.

I have tremendous respect for film composers.

If you take a violin, you can make it sound 50 different ways. Not just pizzicato and played by the bow, but ponticello, and harmonics, and tremolos. If you take an oboe and play it, there's about one way you can make it sound: like an oboe.

Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it.

I always conceive a piece as a different set of challenges.