I've done a lot of operas. I've probably done more different kind of operas than anybody.

My message is to forget about dichotomies. The Brain Opera is an opera, even if it does not tell a story in the usual way. It is a psychological journey with voices - so I do consider it an opera.

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

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.

After a year, I thought gee I don't really need college anymore, which wasn't correct, but that's what I thought.

Any Beatles song is perfect. It gets to you right away.

I like the idea of imagining a sound and feeling a sound and then having it come out through your body, through an instrument. That's an important way to make music.