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 gradually that was part of the process of getting the audience really to trust me.

I grew up on Bach and Beethoven, and now I'm listening to more modern composers who I can't even name. But since I'm constantly doing music, it's difficult to have that quality time to listen to music and do classical stuff.

Compared with other Indian film composers, I only write about six movies a year. Others write up to 60.

Music is at once the product of feeling and knowledge, for it requires from its disciples, composers and performers alike, not only talent and enthusiasm, but also that knowledge and perception which are the result of protracted study and reflection.

The MTC is known for singing music by great master composers, hymns, American music, Broadway numbers, popular songs, and inspirational music. If the audience doesn't like one genre, they need only wait for the next number.

The more dollars the studio producers put in, the less freedom we have. If the budget hits $100m, they get scared - they'll take the existing score of a successful movie and expect composers to copy it, like wallpaper. The biggest challenge for any composer in Hollywood is to be as creative as possible within those boundaries.

In chess, computers show that what we call 'strategy' is reducible to tactics, ultimately. It only looks creative to us. They are still just glorified cash registers. This should make us feel uncomfortable, whether or not we think computers will ever be good composers of music or artistic painters.

Hell may have all the best composers, but heaven has all the best choreographers.

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 gradually that was part of the process of getting the audience really to trust me.

I got interested in the idea of music that could make itself in a sense in the mid 1960s really when I first heard composers like Terry Riley and when I first started playing with tape recorders.

Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism.

Music is at once the product of feeling and knowledge for it requires from its disciples composers and performers alike not only talent and enthusiasm but also that knowledge and perception which are the result of protracted study and reflection.

My musical knowledge is so bad it's embarrassing. When composers discuss music with someone as primitive as myself they have to talk about it in terms of senses and emotion rather than keys and tempo.

We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces which represent 30% of our musical experience.

It's amazing how fast generations lose sight of other generations. One of the first things the young composers who come to work with me say is that they want to write music people will like instead of gaining their credentials by being rejected by the audience.