One of my central maxims is how a major part of what a conductor tries to do is get a large group of people to agree on where "now" actually is..

The world changes when there's music in it..

The first year I started in San Francisco, there was an American work on every program and there's been a lot of music by living composers and gradua….

Classical music is an unbroken, living tradition that goes back over 1,000 years, and every one of those years has had something unique and powerful ….

The big difference between human happiness and sadness? Thirty-seven freakin' vibrations..

Classical music is a wonderful 1200 year-old tradition that witnesses everything that it has meant and what it means right now to be human..

This extraordinary group has absolutely captivated my imagination, knocked my socks off - what more can I say?.

Pop music, which I deeply admire and wish I could play better than I can, is based on expressing one mood, one feeling at a time. Classical music is ….

When I first was conducting as guest conductor in Europe 25 years ago, I would propose doing American pieces and grudgingly it would be accepted from….

I have a strange situation as far as my name is concerned, because of course, what should my name really be? Is it my traditional Jewish name? Or thi….

You can't have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as your favorite composers. They simply define what music is!.

The whole path of American music has been so much about the recognition of stylistic diversity, and the recognition of the importance of music which ….

If you're curious, if you have a capacity for wonder, if you're alive, you know all that you need to know [about music]..

What happens when the music stops? Where does it go?.

Being an American musician means being adventurous..

Part of my big message with all this is that if you are alive, you know all you need to know about the message of classical music, because more than ….

It's easier to interest a conservative audience in pushing the musical boundaries than to involve a young audience used to very noisy, assertive musi….

The real deep text of music and the whole reason that it has continued with the profundity and urgency that it has for over a thousand years, has to ….

And what classical music does best and must always do more, is to show this kind of transformation of moods, to show a very wide psychological voyage….

Being a conductor is kind of a hybrid profession because most fundamentally, it is being someone who is a coach, a trainer, an editor, a director..

Thank God for movie music. It preserves the rich vocabulary in classical music through challenging times..