Singers are great. I love the voice, and there can be no better instrument to write for.

Interviews with musicians, composers and conductors
Singers are great. I love the voice, and there can be no better instrument to write for.
The sense that people you respect and care about are straining every sinew for the sake of your compositional efforts and their realisation is a uniquely humbling experience. At times it has made the music seem to stare back at me, externalised and somehow become ‘other’.
The pleasures of working with imaginative, engaged, and skillful musicians are immense and in some ways unexpected. Working with great musicians is a truly healthy collaboration
Remember that art and life are an interweaving dance, and that one informs and inspires the other. Develop an instinct for which sacrifices are truly worth making and which risks are worth taking.
The pieces in which the spirit, notation, concept, sound, come together to make something distinctive.
I think a turning point came when I discovered Mahler at age 16, that’s when I understood what music can be more fully than before.