Whenever I get asked to write orchestra music or music that is for a lot of players, I try to make it a little sad.

As a composer you want to tell musicians two completely contradictory things. You want to say, "Play exactly what I wrote, but bring your own thing to it." In a lot of ways they feel like opposites, but in a sense, my job is to cajole or encourage decisions that I approve of.

Every couple weeks I'll listen to Sibelius's Seventh Symphony, just to check in, to see how it's doing. It's doing OK.

Whenever I get asked to write orchestra music or music that is for a lot of players, I try to make it a little sad.

I think my generation is a lost generation in a way.

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

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.