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.

As a young composer I had a particular fondness for Liszt's Beethoven Symphony arrangements for the piano, and to this day I enjoy playing non-piano music at the piano.

Just as all pop music is not simplistic, not all contemporary concert music is complex. Often what a person connects with goes much deeper than generalized issues of simplicity and complexity.

The best critics leave the reader curious to pursue something further, but still to let the reader have his or her own honest, unique opinion.

As I see it, the major requirements for a strong and able rendering are an understanding of a work's structure, voicing, and trajectory; an ability to execute the details on the page from largest to smallest; technical command, and hopefully a connection with the overall expressive impulse (though the latter is not at all necessary to give a good performance).

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.

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.