…when seeking the fundamental essence of music, one cannot confine oneself to a narrow approach.

Pop music does matter, but composers have nothing to do with it. Some of the best pop music is the least composerly, and much of the most strongly ‘composed’ pop is boring. Pop has its own complexities and quandaries, and they do not relate to manuscript paper. (Or engraving software.)

[M]y own postgraduate years as a composer were periodically scarred by bad workshops: workshops led by bored, cowardly composers and timid, cynical or just plain unimaginative performers who could only tell you what you couldn’t do, and what wouldn’t work (which would include pretty much anything interesting or innovative), and wouldn’t know real creativity if it punched them in the face.

A workshop should be a place of idealism and risk-taking, and anyone who can’t get fully behind that agenda has no business going anywhere near a young composer.”

There’s a good argument that the less you know about Mozart or Schubert, the more directly you can understand the sounds composers create today.

I feel like the best way to be a musical citizen is to promote the music that you like. Just before you called me, a friend of mine was IM-ing me. He’s a professional coin collector. He lives in Munich. And he was like, “Send me music.” So I sent him all of this English choral music. And he sent me some Brazilian funk band that he’s gotten into. And that to me is the essence of the perfect way to be a musical citizen.

I haven’t been in a record store forever, but do you remember that room they had for classical music? That crazy room you had to go into? And it felt like you were buying some really specific kind of pornography? It was like you had some messed-up predilection. And all of that is undoing itself. It’s not genres.”