But a large symphony orchestra basically is a repertory company and it has a very enormous repertoire and it is important for the performers to be able to know how to shift focus so that they instantly become part of the sound world that a particular repertoire demands.

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.

The real deep text of music and the whole reason that it has continued with the profundity and urgency that it has for over a thousand years, has to do with what the notes say, what the notes witness, different experiences of hope or doubt that people are able to distill and encode and pass on in this way.

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.

The way you survive in the performing arts is by having a sense of your audience, and doing things which entertain and satisfy the audience, but in a more important way, cause the audience to question many things.

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.

This extraordinary group has absolutely captivated my imagination, knocked my socks off - what more can I say?