Once You Get Over The First Hill,

Conducting Is Intensely Social. You Work With A Hundred People Every Day. You Collaborate, You Try To Focus Their Thoughts, You Try To Give Them A Concept, You Try To Inspire Them, And It's Actually Exhausting.

We Need New Art. Old Art Cannot Do That. It Can Do Lots Of Other Things, And Of Course Humanity Hasn't Changed That Much In The Last Thousand Or Two Thousand Years.so That The Old Greek Dramas Are Still At The Very Heart, Core, Of Human Experience, But Still We Need New Stuff.

If Somebody Had Told Me When I Was Starting Composition In Helsinki In The '70s That I Would End Up In L.a. And To Describe That Journey, Those 17 Years With The Philharmonic And Building The Hall And This And That, I Would Have Said, "this Is A Fairy Tale Of The First Order."

I'm Composing More Than Before. I'm Cutting Down On Conducting.

With American Orchestras, In Particular, Because They Play In Such Huge Halls, Getting A True Pianissimo Is Very Hard.