Esa-Pekka Salonen

I can't imagine how many first performances I've done, perhaps 500. Some of them have been very good, and some of course very bad.

There is more openness in LA to possibilities than on the East Coast of America. There is a pioneering spirit there that stems from the reason people went out there in the first place-to find something new.

Los Angeles is just a more open place. The way L.A. functions is that people give you a forum. They say, Show us what you can do.

I discovered that the people of the North are different and there's no way you can make a person from the North similar to a Southerner. They're two different worlds.

I don't believe in an annual dose of film music for the sake of it being film music. If we program film music, it will be because there is a real artistic reason for doing so.

The players never think they project enough. In a hall that seats 3,300 people, it's a very scary thing to play so quietly that you can barely hear yourself.

I feel very free and very happy to be a composer.

I've learned a lot from the masters of orchestration, like Ravel and Stravinsky.

I love a visceral sound, the kind that hits you in the belly.

Music has just as much to do with movement and body as it does soul and intellect.

This conducting thing happened. In 1983 I was sucked into this international career, which was a very scary experience.

My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.