Strangely, the thing I listen to 75% of the time, when I'm exercising with my headphones on is English Tudor/Elizabethan music, so music from about 1450 to the early 1600's.

Works of art should be stimulating. They should wake people up rather than acting like a sedative.

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

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

You have to train your mind and your ears, but they're more like athletic skills. So, part of music you just have to learn those things or you can't practice the art.

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

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.