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 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.

What happens when the music stops? Where does it go?

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

The first year I started in San Francisco, there was an American work on every program and there's been a lot of music by living composers and gradually that was part of the process of getting the audience really to trust me.

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.

You can't have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as your favorite composers. They simply define what music is!