George Rochberg once said that 'to be a composer, you need to have fire in the belly, fire in the brain, but most importantly, an iron stomach.' I feel this is for the most part true, and hope I might convey something of it to younger composers.

My interactions with musicians have been simply that: interactions with musicians. Issues of gender, or anything else beyond the music-making, have in my experience played no role in whether or not a musician has been able to articulate my intentions as a composer.

While I believe there is certainly a phenomenon of timelessness in art, the people writing today can comment on today in an exclusive manner.

I was fortunate to work with Corigliano for a few years in the mid nineties. Meeting and working with him during those formative years was an important experience.

If people want insights, if they want to swim in the currents of their own time and share the experiences of their time, then it makes sense to engage with the artists of one's own time.

The visual and literary arts are of perennial interest to me, and these art forms have become more and more a part of my life; they have become companions of sorts. I cannot imagine my day to day experiences without the presence of these art forms. They're absolutely essential.

I think the tendency to paint composers or styles of music with too broad a brush - for example, identifying composers as writers of "simple" or "complex" music - has become increasingly problematic and is almost never productive.