If you're curious, if you have a capacity for wonder, if you're alive, you know all that you need to know [about music].

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.

I think music needs to be presented in a way so that kids can grasp songs, dances, simple music that's associated with some particular defining moment in human experience.

If you're curious, if you have a capacity for wonder, if you're alive, you know all that you need to know [about music].

But without the experience of actually singing or playing these things yourself, you don't have the same kind of involvement or understanding of what these musical moves mean. And that is a very big problem in addressing the future of music.

One of my central maxims is how a major part of what a conductor tries to do is get a large group of people to agree on where "now" actually is.

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.