The academic area of new music or modern music festivals is not something which attracts me at all.

Craft is part of the creative process.

I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.

I currently spend a lot of time thinking about orchestration and every detail of a piece.

I know that John Adams has had a very hard time directing French ensembles.

I work very fast, keeping the ideas flowing but making sure they come out the way I intended.

I've heard though that there is a younger generation of tonal French composers who are reacting with vigour.

Music history has flowed under the bridges for many years.

One thing I'm doing on the new Titanic recording is actually bringing in different acoustic spaces.

Over the years I have tried to develop something which is technically assured.

People like Arvo Part would not have been taken seriously 20 years ago.

Similarly you can make a transition from one set of instruments to another imperceptibly.

Still, American composers working in France have had a pretty hard time.

There's another way of making music, by touching the lives and feelings of ordinary people.

What was once underground is now coming to the surface.

Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century.

As I had collaborated with visual artists before whether on installations, on performance pieces, in the context of theatre works and as I had taught for a time in art colleges the idea of writing music in response to painting was not alien.

I have friends who have a CD mastering plant in Hollywood and they are very sceptical about European record labels' understanding of digital technology.

I remember once, when I started writing for the alto saxophone, a saxophonist told me to think of it as being like a cross between an oboe and a viola, but louder.

It makes sense to invest in new work. It's almost like having a research department in a scientific laboratory. You have to try things out. You'll make some bad mistakes. Some things will fail but at least you'll energise the organisation.