You practice and you get better. It’s very simple.
I travel the world, and I’m happy to say that America is still the great melting pot – maybe a chunky stew rather than a melting pot at this point, but you know what I mean.
I don’t know what I’m doing and it’s the not knowing that makes it interesting.
A new language requires a new technique. If what you’re saying doesn’t require a new language, then what you’re saying probably isn’t new.
You get up early in the morning and you work all day. That’s the only secret.
What came to me as a revelation was the use of rhythm in developing an overall structure in music.
What you hear depends on how you focus your ear. We’re not talking about inventing a new language, but rather inventing new perceptions of existing languages.
What I’ve noticed is that people who love what they do, regardless of what that might be, tend to live longer.
I’m interested in what happens to music when other people use it. Whereas there are composers who don’t like anyone to touch their music, I think people should because they do things I can’t think of.
Traditions are imploding and exploding everywhere – everything is coming together, for better or worse, and we can no longer pretend were all living in different worlds because were on different continents.
If you don’t have a basis on which to make the choice, then you don’t have a style at all. You have a series of accidents.
My biggest problem about writing is whenever I write piano pieces, because I then have to learn to play them, which is sometimes not so easy.
If you remember your lineage, you will never feel lonely.
I’ve been called a minimalist composer for more than 30 years, and while I’ve never really agreed with the description, I’ve gotten used to it.
I always knew what I wanted to do and I did it.
But the difference between the little pieces and the big pieces – I’m not actually sure which are the little pieces. With some of the big pieces, it’s a lot of musical running around, whereas the little pieces, you can say everything you want to say.
The work I’ve done is the work I know, and the work I do is the work I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing.