I grew up in an extremely musical atmosphere. There was a lot of music and singing around. I never really thought about one not singing, as a person. I've always sung and made music, it was just self-understood.

Every opera, because every opera is a unique slice of a particular perspective, historical perspective and psychological perspective if not musical style, and so forth, they all present different challenges. Some can be musically very challenging, some can be psychologically more challenging. There is always something that requires a pretty specific amount of energy and attention.

You would be surprised how many people that are very passionate about classical music are deeply involved in Hip Hop. You would think Jazz would be the natural associative, but it's extraordinary what kind of crossed-genre associations we are finding in digital media. And even as I'm talking about it, I find myself speaking very much more about how people are accessing that which, what I do, rather than me being preoccupied trying to market something that I do to them.

Singing is not about timbres or category labels, singing is about fascinating acoustical properties like the colors of the human voice which derive from thought and emotion.

I have every iPod that's been made ˘ that's how sick I am. I carry anything and everything I possibly would want to listen to. I have a lot of jazz. I adore Ralph Towner, Leo Kottke. I've always been a big Oscar Peterson fan. I've branched out a little bit more in rock-and-roll, but that's maybe because I'm 50 years old and I can now listen to Steely Dan again without shame. I adore the Grateful Dead. Creedence Clearwater Revival. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. All that's been fun to get back into. But I'm no longer interested in the Doobie Brothers.

When we look at the arts and letters in America, especially if we look at poetry, and poetry set to music, this dialogue, we have this very powerful beautiful, eclectic, diary, or narration of being in America, being American, participating in America, becoming more of America and also as an American, the American creative spirit, which is quite interesting. Our composers and poets have spent more time writing and thinking and speaking out of what it means to be a composer or poet as well as to be an American, or a composer or poet In America; both relationships.

I think nervousness - a heightened sense of nerves and attention is a very healthy thing for a performer. It is an artificial environment that you are going into whether it's concert or recital, or stage. When I know something so well, I've done it so often, and you kind of walk out for Tuesday night's performance, or you feel like that, that makes me more nervous then being geared up. A little bit like race horses. In the same way that the horses are always difficult to get into that lineup, the worst time of my life is the 10 or 15 minutes before I go on stage.