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. ”