I do believe young people should be obligated to try different types of music - that is what education is. But once you're in a situation as an adult, it doesn't benefit anybody - at least in my experience - to force music on people that they don't like or do not have an interest in - whether it's three-hundred years old or newly written.

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.

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.

I wrote much more quickly when I was younger. Over the years I've required more time in order for the pieces to arrive in a place I am happy with. The process cannot be rushed. I have to live with a piece for quite a while to feel it ultimately is where it needs to be - though anything resembling complete satisfaction remains elusive.

The proliferation of new music groups and individual performers focusing on new music today is heartening. On the one hand the culture is very resistant to new things, and yet it continues to change and grow.

I don't think performance out of duty yields very much. Coercion is never the way to go.

My own goals center around writing the best music that I can, and only I can determine whether or not I've succeeded in accomplishing that.