I don't care how much people understand what it is that I'm doing, except if they're players in my ensemble or other ensembles. I just want people to be moved by the music. If you're not moved by the music, then everything else falls away. You're not interested in the text, you're not interested in how it was done, and you're not interested in interviewing the composer and all the rest of it.

All great music is contemporary. If it's still alive and kicking, then it's contemporary. If it fades away, it was a period piece. It had its moment, and that was it.

in serial music, the series itself is seldom audible... What I'm interested in is a compositional process and a sounding music that are one in the same thing.

I'm not making any absurd comparisons between myself and Bach, but I aspire to that, that my music will have the legs to survive whatever context it finds itself in.

In the pop world, instead of saying I want to get an album by such and such a group, it's I like this particular tune and that one I like less. I think it's much better to get involved with an artist instead of riding up and down the works you like and disregard the works you don't like.

All music does come from a time and place. I was born and raised in New York. I moved out of New York, but it's inside of me and it will be inside of me until they put me in a box in the ground.

As a matter of fact, I personally would much rather hear Perotin than Mozart.