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.

Nobody talks about music as having intrinsic meaning, how it engages the mind.

All the music we know that's popular is actually commonly shared music that takes things that are similar about all of us.

There were a lot of things happen in the mid-'80's that all of a sudden made it possible to do a lot of very quick interactive music.

I listen to new music by composers who are interesting to me. I listen to some; I don't know if I want to call it pop, but it's some interesting artist that gets my attention, I listen to in the mornings.

One of the things I like most of all is being in my study, in my barn, with absolutely no sound anywhere thinking about something. It's extremely important to me.

I did take composition lessons when I was in high school, so I wrote piano pieces. I wrote some chamber music. I don't think any of that was particularly interesting.