I'm pretty clear about what I'm capable of doing.

The score is doing a lot of work. It's like Wagner. It's like a yak carrying people.

I'm trying to phase out my availability on the phone. People call you when you're walking down the street and say the most random stuff.

When you're writing something new, writing something that's your own, basically you have nothing else to do except either invent a trick, use someone else's trick, or have no trick and get a bad performance.

Because I had been in conservatory for so long, I was jealous of my friends in bands.

I'm pretty clear about what I'm capable of doing.

Composition is interesting because, in a sense, you always have to let it go. Unless you're a true composer/performer, you're always sending a PDF and then someone else makes it. It's like instructions for a short story, faxed to every English student who's studying it.