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.
As much as mixing instruments, I'm also mixing acoustic space so the music will travel through some different sorts of environments.
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 did that as a personal journey when I was a philosophy student and working as a jazz musician, so I moved from philosphy to music.
I found more value in that on a personal level, specially in that it made possible a spiritual experience without invoking God.
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 know that John Adams has had a very hard time directing French ensembles.
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.
I work very fast, keeping the ideas flowing but making sure they come out the way I intended.
I would also like the soloist to feel happy to put it in front of the public, because in the end he's on the firing line, not me.
I would say that spending the afternoon in that studio with Tom was as beautiful a musical experience as I can remember.
I've heard though that there is a younger generation of tonal French composers who are reacting with vigour.
In fact I had been asked earlier, in September 1995, through Gary Todd and his Cortical Foundation, if I would be interested in playing again with Derek and Tony.
In the visual arts a relatively recent equivalent might be found within Fluxus and especially in the work of George Brecht.
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.
It's rather like attending a university seminar where you are talking to a few gifted specialists who deliver a paper to an audience of their peers. That's one way of making music.
Like an apparently strict musical form it breaks the five minute whole into its structural parts - a descriptive preamble, the action of taking the cards, the development of the cards' manipulation and the revelation of what has been achieved.
Music history has flowed under the bridges for many years.
My thinking in this was as follows: in all the versions I had made everything that is played serves to accompany and support the old man's voice.
On the other hand everyday life can equally serve as an unfocused (ambient) activity while the radio itself is playing - the preparation a meal during a radio play for example.
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.
Philip Glass is successful because of Bob Wilson's theatre works in Paris and Lyon.
Philips did stipulate that Julian and I had to iron out our relationship. I had to could come up with something we would both be happy with.
Record companies and live concert organisations have gone on for too long, reproducing the same repertoire endlessly.
Similarly you can make a transition from one set of instruments to another imperceptibly.
Somehow in the 20th Century an idea has developed that music is an activity or skill which is not comprehensible to the man in the street. This is an arrogant assertion and not necessarily a true one.
Still, American composers working in France have had a pretty hard time.
The academic area of new music or modern music festivals is not something which attracts me at all.
The ideal, of course, is to have the respect of professionals and the admiration of amateurs. I suppose this was the case in the past.
The project which we developed, however, was for a sound piece and I was initially curious that a sculptor should be interested in working with a musician, especially on a project for radio.
The transition from one form of percussion to another and the ways in which it's possible to blur those distinctions is quite interesting.
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.
When I got back to New York I sorted the individual repetitions into groups (the groups of repetitions which he had sung) and constructed a sequence which would follow the contours of the orchestration.
When Philip Glass asked me if I would be interested in doing a new recording of Jesus' Blood he assumed that I would do something similar to the first version and wanted to know what other pieces would be on the same CD.
Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century.
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