My job is to try and hear something that no one else has heard yet. Now that the whole world of music is available instantly at our fingertips, the world is one big, noisy Musicircus that never ends. Everything is happening everywhere, all the time. But that canon is now a thing of the past. If there is a cultural mainstream today, it may lie in the products of the commercial entertainment industry.
Diversity is strength.
This is a fundamental principle of biology and of culture. At the foundation of my own life s work is a strong conviction that the work of local culture is a vital and essential countercurrent to global commercial monoculture. In a world dominated by Disney, Time-Warner and a handful of other global corporations, it may well be that one of the most radical acts that artists can perform today is simply to stay at home and do our work. One of those big, open form works by Bach, maybe The Art of Fugue. I d give up the CDs and finally plunk my way through The Well-Tempered Clavier.