It Doesn't Need To Be Imagined, It

You Get Up Early In The Morning And You Work All Day. That’s The Only Secret.

So The Real Drama For Me Is Balancing Live Performances And Writing, And One Of The Ways I Balance It Is I Write In Hotel Rooms. That's Not Exactly Balancing. Actually, Writing In Hotel Rooms Means That I'm Refusing To Deal With The Problem.

It Takes About A Year To Write An Opera For Me, But Not A Really A Year Of Writing. I'm Touring At The Same Time, And I'm Playing, Sometimes Doing Smaller Projects.[the Opera] Akhnaten Fits In With Gandhi And Einstein, So That Forms A Trilogy In A Way.i Picked People Who Were These Kind Of Larger Than Life Characters, Who Kind Of Changed The World They Lived In By Almost The Force Of Their Personality And Their Inventiveness. People That I Think Not Only Do I Admire But I Think They're Admirable People.

I Shift Between Mediums Very Frequently. Instead Of Taking A Break From Writing, I Just Write In A Different Medium Or In A Different Way Or For A Different Purpose, So That I Don't Actually Stop Writing - I Just Go To Something Else. Like Going From A Big Symphony To A Piano Piece Is Great And Very Refreshing, I Find. And Then Going From That To A Big Concerto, And Then Having To Go Out And Play.

I Was A Regular Kind Of Academic Music Student. I Was At Juilliard. I Had To Study All The Contemporary Music Of The Time, And Changing That Language Very Radically Was Just A Sign Or A Signal That I Was Going To Try To Do Something Very Different. I Find That That's What I Feel Closest To. I Found No Real Inner Response In Me In A Non-tonal Language.