I think from age 13, 14, 15, I thought, yes, this rich studio produced music is the future, but it can't be the future to go run away into the recording studio. How can we take that kind of complexity and richness and make it possible for people to touch it and play it live. That's what hyperinstruments are.

I love the cello, I love the physical sense of an instrument that's about the size of your body that vibrates enough that even if you play an open string, you feel it.

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.

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

I almost never these days sit down with a CD or my laptop and just listen to a piece with a score. I probably would do that while I'm exercising.

The Beatles realized that what they were making in the studio could never be performed. And they had already given up on performing because there were too many screaming fans and they were playing in larger and larger venues so they couldn't even hear what they were playing, it just wasn't any fun any more.

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.