I write arrangements. Im sort of a wannabe composer.

When you play for ticket-holders, you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I'm already accepted.

Social media puts us inside our phones and our computers and our headphones, and we're not connecting so much with our outside environment. Even when people go to the Grand Canyon they're more concerned about the selfies than actually looking at the canyon. I see it with my own kids - the addiction to needing things fast, never pausing to just see what's around us and connect with our fellow human beings in real time.

Being a classical musician, you're doing many things anyway. One day you're doing Bach concerto and the next you're doing some avant-garde thing. It's just another hat that I'm allowed to wear.

I don't listen to a lot of music when I have my free time. But I'll go to a jazz club and have a drink and listen to a good jazz musician. Or sometimes in the morning, if I want to put myself in a good mood, I'll put on some Latin music.

If you mess up the tiniest little thing in the Beethoven concerto, or the phrasing isn't just exactly perfectly executed, Beethoven brings out the worst in the best violinist. You almost never hear a satisfying performance, because it doesn't play itself.

You only live once, so I try to say yes to everything.