"I think if composers are being honest, whenever we assign a program to abstract instrumental music, we're always doing a little bit of myth-making."
"I just wanted people to experience this music in a primal and hypnotic way. Kind of going back to what made us fall in love with music in the first place."
It wasn't just his tenor voice, but there was something bordering on ethereal about his singing. Perhaps it was his 3-1/2 octave range that first grabbed me.
"Her music has that sense of being arresting and shakes us up. But it also just sounds so right and so organic."
"Trying to open people's hearts feels more politically useful than trying to convince people of something."
"There was a palpable feeling building in the audience that we knew she would make it to the finish line in breathtaking form."
"In some ways it's the most personal piece of mine because of that resonance with the land and with the history."
"When you're dealing with these amazing artists on stage who have these different ways of expression, really the music can go anywhere."
"When you think about it, love is just something that you have to distract you from what's going on with your death."
"They're not traditional fodder for making of opera stories. But they are love stories, actually, at the heart of each of them. Really broke and screwed-up love stories."