Teenagers love playing new music; I know this because I run a contemporary chamber orchestra for teens which in its sixth season can hardly keep up with the enthusiasm of its members.

Many Americans would love to claim Louis Andriessen as ours simply because we recognize so much of us in him and of him in us.

I’ve often been asked why I would want to compose an opera and while I actually expect this question to arise among those who know me primarily through my work as a film composer, when it’s asked by accomplished composers who have also composed operas, it seems that its answer lies more in the philosophical than the practical.

Professional singers and dancers have always been trained to think of their bodies as delicate instruments that need constant maintenance, instrumentalists less so, but is it possible that we have not recognized heretofore that a composer’s body is itself an instrument, too?

The Complexity Wars flared up again this summer—that seemingly annual outbreak of the opinion that various types of atonal modernism are just too complicated for proper musical consumption.

I’ve achieved enough success that my day job currently supplements my income as a composer, but I could not have accomplished the things I have accomplished had I been living in New York.

We are always searching for new sounds, and Partch offers a sound world of staggering variety and beauty.

After 55 years, Le marteau sans maître is still a drag and Wagner’s remark that Beethoven’s Seventh is “the apotheosis of the dance” should be banned from program notes for at least the next decade, partly on the grounds of overuse, partly on the grounds of fatuousness.

In March 2010, drastic fiscal measures were proposed to balance the Detroit city budget which included the firing of all arts teachers in the Detroit Public School system. Operatic tenor George Shirley, university emeritus professor of music and former director of the Vocal Arts Division of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, began documenting the situation, and we asked him to share his information with NewMusicBox.

The Nemmers Prize is a welcome sign that my music seems to resonate “out there” in the larger world; At the same time, I’ve found myself wondering: Does this mean that I’m no longer an outsider?