David Harrington, who's the violinist and founder of Kronos, is a super open-minded and adventurous guy.
Obviously, any living musician born after 1960 has been touched by rock and roll. It's the music of our time, and it's 'in the air,' as Steve Reich would say. My experience of it is just really direct because I'm actually playing in a collaborative band.
I don't labour over my lead guitar solos; they're better just caught in the moment.
I can imagine myself as an old man writing music for choir or orchestra. I don't know that I'll be touring six months out of the year in a rock band when I'm 60.
For many people in the music conservatory world, the message was always, Focus! 'You can't do everything; you really need to specialize.' And especially at an early age, I ignored this advice.
As a pop musician, as someone who makes songs, the best ideas are the simplest. They come, and that's the lightning bolt moment.
Working with Bob Weir directly, we learned how high the bar is for Dead music.
The thing I realised about composition is, we remember most composers for four bars of music. Four singable bars of music. Pretty much any major composer from Debussy to Ravel to Mozart to whoever else - you can kind of hum it.
I grew up going to see my sister dance, both at the ballet and later as a modern dancer, and have always been a big fan of the ballet. So I have had a long relationship with dance.
When working with classical musicians, it is important to be clear as possible in the score about what my intentions are. Because there isn't a lot of rehearsal time, especially at the ballet, it's best if everything is written in the score.
Part of what I enjoy about writing classical music is communicating through the score and collaborating with such amazing musicians.
We've played in places where there were more of us onstage than in the audience.
I like to write on tour busses and airplanes. Something about moving.
For me, the exhausting thing about touring is the sitting around, which is why working on my concert music is really great - and also seeing concerts and seeing friends and, whenever possible, getting out to see a museum.
For a composer of concert music, 40 is actually very young. But for a rock musician, 40 is almost past due, where you think of rock music as really part of more youth-oriented culture.
Typically, people think, 'Oh the hippies and the punks hated each other,' or that those things don't go together musically. Sometimes that is true, but we had equal parts of both in our musical DNA.
There are all kind of corners of the musical world that are deeply influenced by the Dead that one wouldn't expect. Lee Ranaldo is a crazy Deadhead.
I've got this diverse education, growing up in classical music and existing between that and music that is more visceral, so for sure, I've always been interested in music from other cultures.
I'm not trying to take over the world, but I find it really rewarding to write, and I thrive on learning.
We've gotten better as a live band. The songs have been allowed to grow with our audience. I don't think I would have done it any other way.
