As a young child, I thought that all pianists played everything. I mean, I thought anything on piano - any piano music, all pianists played it.
When I'm flying, I really like to listen to piano music. Something impressionistic, loud and beautiful. Flying can be such a claustrophobic experience, it's nice to open that up a bit with music.
I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.
People sort of know me for that solo piano music I did.
I cannot work and listen to Wagner at the same time, nor Mahler, nor Beethoven's late quartets. I enjoy listening to Chopin's piano music when I work.
As a young composer I had a particular fondness for Liszt's Beethoven Symphony arrangements for the piano, and to this day I enjoy playing non-piano music at the piano.
It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.
Without a piano I don't know how to stand, don't know what to do with my hands.
I don't like the piano player music of the movies, the Michael Nyman, and sometimes that piano music makes me puke. It's not really romantic. It's just trying to get your Pavlovian juices flowing because it's a technique now.
Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.
