Classical music is a wonderful 1200 year-old tradition that witnesses everything that it has meant and what it means right now to be human.

Part of my big message with all this is that if you are alive, you know all you need to know about the message of classical music, because more than any other music, it is about the way life really is.

Being a conductor is kind of a hybrid profession because most fundamentally, it is being someone who is a coach, a trainer, an editor, a director.

Being an American musician means being adventurous.

But those musics do not address the larger kind of architecture in time that classical music does, whatever each one of us knows that classical music must mean.

I have a strange situation as far as my name is concerned, because of course, what should my name really be? Is it my traditional Jewish name? Or this curious name my parents put together, partially to honor departed family members, and partially to keep me away from the absolute craziness of my grandparents' fame and the intrusiveness of their fans? So many people call me "MTT," and some do say, "Oh Maestro," and some are comfortable calling me Michael.

The big difference between human happiness and sadness? Thirty-seven freakin' vibrations.