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

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

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

Writing orchestra music, you need for the emotional content to come from everyone doing everything together, adding up as it goes, a crowd mentality.

In really fancy restaurants they never point to the bathroom, they just gesture toward the bathroom or they'll lead you to the bathroom. The fancier the restaurant, the less pointing there is.

There's a lot of violence in Beethoven not explicitly suggested by the notes or in his markings, necessarily. There's just a way that it looks on the page that encourages it to be played in a certain fashion.