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

I think of myself as experimenting with different ways of structuring pieces. A lot of it has to do with the computer, of course.

I wrote a lot of software to do various kinds of special things, and I loved the idea of composing pieces in an electronic studio.

Very often, when you're listening to a piece for the first time, you're listening through a model of other pieces that you know. At a certain point, a piece becomes idiosyncratic and you start to understand it on its own terms.

I was very fortunate to be at a wealthy institution. I do recognize the drawbacks and limitations of the academic world but it's basically the world I grew up in and there's no way in which I would have been able to survive in the so-called real world.

My perspective on the academic world is very favorable. I did certain kinds of things that I could never have done otherwise.

With repeated listenings, a piece eventually becomes its own being. I very often say to students that this is like meeting a person for the first time. When you first meet someone, you reference that person with others who are similar; but, as you get to know that person better, you begin to understand his unique qualities.