Music seems to stimulate more parts of our mind than almost every other activity. It combines more parts of our minds. It synchronizes our minds. It allows people in groups to do a non-verbal immediate activity together.

I had grown up and gone to high school in New York, so I wanted to get out of the east coast.

One of my interests in music has always been what it means, why it affects us the way it does.

it's important as a composer to sit in silence and imagine these complex musical worlds in your head, but it's also a wonderful experience to touch your music and to hear it and hear it in the room with you and to say, you can't have an entire orchestra there, but you'd kind of like to have the orchestra there.

I think a double bass for me would be too much effort. But the cello, you're really engaged and the sound is kind of right here. So, it feels like being merged, married to an instrument.

The way I listen to music goes in waves depending on a lot of things. How busy I am, if I'm in between composition projects, if I'm starting a new project. So, the only time I listen to the radio for music is with my daughter's when I'm driving them to school, or driving them somewhere.

There's just an incredibly rich and interesting relationship between our listening to music and the way our minds engage.