I write my music with the idea that it will appeal to all of those people, and I want them to go in with all the history that's within all of us - all the things that they've listened to in the backs of their minds, whether it's country music or minimal techno, or classical music or whatever. I want them to bring that excitement, that love, or that hate, or whatever it might be, to my music. I feel that my music draws on so many different things.

I write my music with the idea that it will appeal to all of those people, and I want them to go in with all the history that's within all of us - all the things that they've listened to in the backs of their minds, whether it's country music or minimal techno, or classical music or whatever. I want them to bring that excitement, that love, or that hate, or whatever it might be, to my music. I feel that my music draws on so many different things.

I think there's just been this "thing" that's developed, this way that we have of talking about our music that alienates people. And I fall into that too! I learned that in graduate school. You just talk about your music in a specific way, and that separates people from you. But some composers like that. Schoenberg liked that. He wanted to feel that he was making music for an elite few. That's fine for him, but I want to set myself free from that sort of attitude.

I really think of my motives, my melodies, my harmonies, as being these things that are very much alive. They have these little lives of their own that are stretched and pulled, and I do conceive of my music in a very narrative way.

I want my music to be something that people use in order to access parts of themselves. So in that sense, every piece I write is about all emotions at once, about the lines in between. It's never only about one thing or another. It's emotionally getting at those things that we can't really describe - things for which we don't have labels. So yes, it's about something, and it has a use. It's neither about nothing nor about something concrete - it's about what you bring to it as a listener.

Sometimes you feel some artists are doing the same thing that you're doing but in a different field. But they have the same approach. Their method of research and gathering data is the same as yours.

Of course I love when people are quiet, but I also love when people are comfortable. I love when people emote. The flip side of having a totally silent audience is that they're less likely to react to you in the space, and I think that's one of the great things about performing live: you get energy from the audience, and you give energy back to them. There's interaction.