The Work I've Done Is The Work

The Generation Of Composers That Are Just Preceded Me, People Like [karlheinz] Stockhausen, [pierre] Boulez, And, Well, [john] Cage For That Matter,[morton] Feldman ... That Was A Kind Of Experimental Music That Was Very Isolated. It Had No Real Public.

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.

I, As A Young Guy Getting Out Of Music School, I Didn't Like The Prospect Of Spending My Life Writing Music For About 200 People.

Theatrical Times Are Different From Concert Times, To Put It Simply. Taking A Figure Like [mahatma] Gandhi And Setting Him On A Stage Requires Thinking About What Theater Is About And What The Whole Experience Is About And What We're Trying To Communicate In That Way, So You Get Into Certain Less Abstract Considerations.

I Think It's A Great Handicap To Be Discovered At An Early Age. I Didn't Have That Burden Of Early Success. I Had The Much More Livable And Durable Career Where Success Comes Late, And Comes Slowly, And You Ease Into It. So By The Time It Comes, You're Ready To Deal With It.