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.

I'd studied piano first and switched over to cello when I was about seven. I played mostly chamber and solo classical music. I got really involved with rock music when I was a teenager. I wired up my cello.

I went to the University of California, Santa Cruz for a year, which turned out to be a really vibrant, very intensive intellectual atmosphere where you could do a lot of aspect of music without it being a conservatory. And that's why I went there.

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.

Perhaps 25 to 50 years from now, I can design a piece of music, no so that it appeals to something common in millions of people, but I can design the music so that it's exactly right for you and only you at this particular moment for your particular experience, things that have happened to you over 20 years, to you're particular mental state right now.

The English learned, in my view, how to use harmony much earlier than the French or the Italians, or the Germans.