The best results come when people believe in and feel strongly about the music they are playing. Just as composers write for certain types of performers, performers are also looking for certain things.

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.

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.

Of course, all people have their own reasons for believing what they do about gender. In my case, in over two decades of collaborating with men and women in music - conductors or otherwise - I have seen no distinction.

A critic can serve as guide. I think there's an understanding amongst the public that critics have their own preferences and dislikes.

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