I don't think there's something that you have to 'get' with my music. It tends toward the dramatic side rather than the narrative.

If the music has a logic of its own - as I think my music has - an open-minded listener will apprehend and understand.

I think of myself as an experimentalist even though much of my music sounds logical and normal, in a sense.

I was hired for a really excellent academic job early in my life; I was twenty-five when I started at Princeton and I got tenure early on. I really didn't deserve this; I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

With a piece of classical music by Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven, on first listening I'm referencing it with other pieces by them that I know. I think that most people do this - they listen to pieces through the filter of pieces they already know.

When you have performers, there's the uniqueness of live performance and what performers do in concerts.

I've had a lot of fun writing percussion music. It feels quite similar to writing computer music. But I found myself in the role of choreographer in a way, worrying about physical movement and such.