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.

I came to what I think of as the critical problem: the aging process of a piece of music. I noticed in the '70s that pieces I wrote would sound great the first time I listened to them and then on repeated hearings they sounded older and older until what seemed exciting and vibrant on first listening became stale.

It's always a thrill for me to see new versions of my pieces on YouTube.

I never thought that I would write orchestra music, but in fact I did write a group of orchestra pieces.

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

I found myself recycling ideas and I saw that I had to invent reasons to compose a piece rather than start from some exciting idea.

I don't think of my music as being about something.