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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I came up in the '60s; that was a time when there was a revolution going on in music. Stravinsky had become a twelve-tone composer; even Aaron Copland was writing twelve-tone pieces at that time!